astronomy

Stephen Buckland

Stephen Buckland is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Stephen Buckland rather than just read about it. In short: Stephen Terrence Buckland (born 28 July 1955) is a British statistician and professor at the University of St Andrews. He is best known for his work on distance sampling, a widely used technique for estimating the size of animal populations.

Key takeaways

Stephen Buckland belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Stephen Buckland to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Stephen Buckland from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Stephen Terrence Buckland (born 28 July 1955) is a British statistician and professor at the University of St Andrews. He is best known for his work on distance sampling, a widely used technique for estimating the size of animal populations. He has also made significant contributions in the following areas: bootstrap resampling methods; modelling the dynamics of wild animal populations and measuring biodiversity.

Biography Buckland was born in Dorset, England, the youngest of three children. After secondary education at Foster's School, Sherborne, he studied mathematics at the University of Southampton and the University of Edinburgh, followed by a PhD in statistics from the University of Aberdeen in 1983. He had a keen interest in natural history from a young age, and now has a strong interest in wildlife photography. He became “Photographer in Residence” at Tentsmuir National Nature Reserve in 2018.

Academic career From 1977 to 1985 he was lecturer in statistics, University of Aberdeen. He then became senior scientist at the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission, based at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, California, estimating trends in dolphin abundance in the eastern tropical Pacific, to assess the impacts of tuna fisheries on dolphin stocks. In 1988 he accepted the post of statistician at Scottish Agricultural Statistics Service (now Biomathematics and Statistics Scotland), based at the Macaulay Land Use Research Institute (now the James Hutton Institute). In 1993 he was appointed professor of statistics, University of St Andrews, and still holds the position as of 2019. At St Andrews, he established the Centre for Research into Ecological and Environmental Modelling (CREEM) in 1999, and was its Director from 1999 to 2004, and again from 2009 to 2014. He co-founded the National Centre for Statistical Ecology (NCSE) in 2005, with Byron Morgan at the University of Kent, and Steve Brooks, then at the University of Cambridge. He was Director or co-director until 2019. With others he established the biennial International Statistical Ecology Conferences, with both the first conference (in 2008) and the sixth conference (in 2018) hosted by St Andrews. Buckland has published around 190 refereed papers spanning statistics, mathematics, ecology, conservation, wildlife management, experimental and theoretical biology, fisheries, environmental science, botany, zoology, geography, geology, epidemiology, agroforestry, remote sensing and analytical chemistry. He is one of the developers of distance sampling methods, and is first author on four books on the subject. Buckland was editor of the Journal of Agricultural, Biological and Environmental Statistics from 2016 to 2018.

Awards Buckland was elected a Fellow of the International Statistical Institute in 1995 and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2007. He was a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellow in 2005–06. He was a Member of the Council of the Royal Statistical Society during 2005–09. In 2019, he was awarded the Royal Statistical Society's Guy Medal in Gold, the 38th recipient since its inception in 1892.

Selected publications

Books authored S. T. Buckland, D. R. Anderson, K. P. Burnham and J. L. Laake (1993). Distance Sampling: Estimating Abundance of Biological Populations. Chapman and Hall, London.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) S. T. Buckland, D. R. Anderson, K. P. Burnham, J. L. Laake, D. L. Borchers and L. Thomas (2001). Introduction to Distance Sampling. Oxford University Press, Oxford.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) D. L. Borchers, S. T. Buckland and W. Zucchini (2002). Estimating Animal Abundance: Closed Populations. Springer Verlag, London. ISBN 9781852335601. K. B. Newman, S. T. Buckland, B. J. T Morgan, R. King, D. L. Borchers, D. J. Cole, P. Besbeas, O. Gimenez and L. Thomas (2014). Modelling population dynamics: model formulation, fitting and assessment using state-space methods. Springer, New York.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) S. T. Buckland, E. A. Rexstad, T. A. Marques, and C. S. Oedekoven (2015). Distance Sampling: Methods and Applications. Springer, New York.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

Books edited Buckland, S. T.; Bell, M. V.; Picozzi, and N., eds. (1990). The Birds of North East Scotland. North East Scotland Bird Club, Aberdeen. S. T. Buckland, D. R. Anderson, K.P. Burnham, J. L. Laake, D. L. Borchers and L. Thomas (eds) (2004). Advanced Distance Sampling. Oxford University Press, Oxford. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

Selected journal articles N. H. Augustin, M. A. Mugglestone and S. T. Buckland (1996). "An autologistic model for the spatial distribution of wildlife". Journal of Applied Ecology. 33 (2): 339–347. Bibcode:1996JApEc..33..339A. doi:10.2307/2404755. JSTOR 2404755. S. T. Buckland, K. P. Burnham and N. H. Augustin (1997). "Model selection: an integral part of inference". Biometrics. 53 (2): 603–618. doi:10.2307/2533961. JSTOR 2533961. L. Thomas, S. T. Buckland, E. A. Rexstad, J. L. Laake, S. Strindberg, S. L. Hedley, J. R. B. Bishop, T. A. Marques and K. P. Burnham (2010). "Distance software: design and analysis of distance sampling surveys for estimating population size". Journal of Applied Ecology. 47 (1): 5–14. Bibcode:2010JApEc..47....5T. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2664.2009.01737.x. PMC 2847204. PMID 20383262.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Stephen Buckland

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Stephen Buckland claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Stephen Buckland before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Stephen Buckland ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Stephen Buckland

In research: Stephen Buckland appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Stephen Buckland in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Stephen Buckland is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1955 births, 20th-century British statisticians, 21st-century British statisticians, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Stephen Buckland outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Stephen Buckland in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Stephen Buckland means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Stephen Buckland out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Stephen Buckland in simple terms?

Why does Stephen Buckland matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Stephen Buckland?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Stephen Buckland.