Indeed, dear reader. Much as we may wish it were not so, long gone are the days of natural history being written in elegant Victorian prose. Delve into any serious journal, examine any research touching upon the subject, and far from contemplating a tangled bank, you’ll instead be puzzling over various numbers, Greek letters, and assorted cryptic squiggles that to the uninitiated may have as well have been copied from the gold embroidery on a wizard’s pointy purple hat. If you’re going to pursue any studies in the field, lest you remain on the most genteel margins, an understanding – at least at a basic level – of statistics is required.