"I took the in-person version of this AES (1 and 2) course. It was absolutely excellent. I told my manager that it was the best lecture/workshop that I had ever been to! Of any kind, but especially of stats. Dennis took the time to explain the stats very clearly and identified very important things to consider, especially in terms of water chemistry data. I have always had trouble with trends of concentrations or loads over time because of the variability due to flow. Now I know how to deal with this situation, and will be able to separate natural from possible human-caused changes in water quality. I will be applying these techniques in the future, including multiple regression (while removing the effect of flow) and the Regional Kendall test to see if there is an increasing or decreasing trend watershed-wide. This will enable me to write a paper on trends in water quality in the Lake Simcoe river basin in Ontario."
- Eavan OConnor, Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority, Ontario
Dennis Helsel (Ph.D. Environmental Science and Engineering):
"I'm a translator of statistical methods for scientists. My firm's name, Practical Stats, says it all. I've written/co-authored two textbooks. Statistics for Censored Environmental Data using Minitab and R (2012) pioneered statistical methods for data below detection limits. Statistical Methods in Water Resources (2nd edition coming this year) is cited by scientists throughout the world. I've taught webinars for the National Water Quality Monitoring Council and others; workshops for the American Statistical Association and others; courses such as AES for scientists in North America, Europe and Singapore since 1990.
I worked for 30 years at the US Geological Survey before starting Practical Stats. In 2003 I received the Distinguished Achievement Award from the American Statistical Association’s Section on Statistics and the Environment for my training courses in applied statistics."