Descriptive statistics of data: Understanding the data set and phenotypes of interest

Abstract

A good understanding of the design of an experiment and the observational data that have been collected as part of the experiment is a key pre-requisite for correct and meaningful preparation of field data for further analysis. In this chapter, I provide a guideline of how an understanding of the field data can be gained, preparation steps that arise as a consequence of the experimental or data structure, and how to fit a linear model to extract data for further analysis. © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2013.