STATISTICAL-ANALYSIS OF ALGAL AND WATER-QUALITY DATA

Data on cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) are gene:rally collected on a reactive basis, frequently in response to bloom events. Such data pre sents a biased and incomplete snapshot of water quality. This paper lo oks at two typical data sets for UK waters showing that while statisti cs may be used to describe the data they are of limited use in forecas ting. Suggestions of appropriate tests for small and sparse data sets are made.