Towards an Understanding of Data in Physical Anthropology

Susan R. Wilson
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Susan R. Wilson: The Australian National University, Department of Statistics, IAS

A chapter in Multivariate Statistical Methods in Physical Anthropology, 1984, pp 261-282 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Of recent years it has become popular in the analysis of physical anthropological data to eschew the yesteryear commonly-done, univariate, and simple comparative analyses of such data, and to launch into complex multivariate analyses that are commonly available in popular statistical packages on high-speed computers. Used with sufficient care and understanding, these multivariate approaches to the analysis of data have given additional insight, besides that given by the univariate analyses, into the complex underlying structures of the data. However the formal numerical techniques of data analysis (as described in basic statistics texts, and developed in journals of statistics) are too often designed to yield specific answers to rigidly defined questions. In general, the objectives of anthropological data analysis are neither so narrow nor so formal as described and implied by some statistical theories of estimation and hypothesis testing.

Keywords: Mahalanobis Distance; Canonical Variate; Skeletal Remains; Physical Anthropology; Graphical Technique (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1984
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DOI: 10.1007/978-94-009-6357-3_16

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