"A major goal of earth scientists is to make geological interpretations based on statistical inferences, but accomplishing this is difficult due to the "abuse" of statistical methods. This book, the first in the International Association for Mathematical Geology Series, addresses the underlying assumptions of randomness, normality, and variance of sample data used with statistical methods. The authors uncover the reasons for unreliable or invalid statistical results and discuss the use of statistical measures of association, correlation, and regressions with relatively uncontrolled and variable natural data. Their analyses help to bridge the gap between geostatisticians and earth science researchers, and will be valuable to a wide range of earth scientists"--Publisher description.