... species.¹

A deterministic process is one in which the future state can be exactly specified given knowledge of the present state.

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... persistence.²

A stochastic process is one in which only the probability distribution for future states can be specified, even given exact knowledge of the present state.

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... this.³

This is the first of several mathematical models you're going to be seeing over the next few lectures, so take a deep breath and hold on.

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... true.⁴

You'll be happy to hear that we're not going to prove that theorem. If you're interested, though, I'd be happy to walk through the proof with you.

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... small.⁵

In other words, it's like genetic stochasticity. It's a symptom of endangerment, not a cause.

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...R⁶

R is an open source statistical package largely compatible with the commercial S-Plus. It is extremely powerful and flexible, although if you're used to SAS, it takes a little getting used to. If you'd like to get a copy, you can download executables for Windoze, Macintosh, or Linux at http://www.r-project.org/.

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... small.⁷

If you're reading footnotes, you'll notice that I already pointed this out once, but it's an important point, so it's worth making twice.

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