ANCOVA won me ova'

The primary analysis I used for my fire ant analysis was an ANCOVA. Apparently, this is the standard method of teasing apart background effects for studies like mine where there is one treatment field and one field observed to account for seasonal variation. I found it a little frustrating because, in order to do an ANCOVA, you must first show that the response variable changes in response to the covariate and that there is a significant correlation between the covariate and independent variable. Since I did multiple ANCOVAs on different species of ants and some fit the model and some didn't, I was a bit nervous that I would have to go back to square one and find a new model to analyze the data. However, after some consultation, it turns out that as long as the model is appropriate for some of the other species and the species in question shows some trends towards at least one of the statistical tests for appropriateness of the ANCOVA, then it is ok to use the model. PHEW!

ANCOVA

Multiple players
Unstack the deck
Now deal

~from "The Tao of Statistics" by Dana K. Keller