(Part 1, Part II)
This afternoon we have been talking about what we did in previous workshops. So far I’ve managed to avoid talking about the stuff I did, which is fortunate because I’ve largely forgotten what I did.

Most of the work has been trying to model spatial dynamics of populations. The big problem is that the observations are relatively sparse: only a few sites are observed so there is a lot of missing data that needs to be estimated (if we are thinking about expanding populations, we have to know where a new population could have come from). This makes things horribly difficult. One approach is to fit a full model and estimate the missing data, and just let a computer run for a long time. An alternative is to make some approximations, which will speed things up but be less exact.

Now we’ve got a discussion about what could be done with the data. I’m getting twitchy, because I want us to start working on some data: I find these problems will become clearer once we start doing the real work.

We also got the BUGS stuff working, and over coffee I had a chat with a Spanish guy about his data, which is similar to some of the other things we have been talking about: abundances of butterflies, but up an altitudinal gradient. Useful for estimating the effects of climate change!

Now we’re trying to work out when to have the next meeting, before we run off the the pub again. I wonder if they have crepes.

Ooh, I’ve just been given some data. Now I’m happy.