Welcome (Fàilte)
Highland Statistics Ltd was founded more than 25 years ago by Dr. Alain F. Zuur (statistician). The company is based in Scotland and provides statistical courses and consultancy.
Statistics courses
An interdisciplinary team consisting of Dr. Alain F. Zuur (statistician) and Dr. Elena N. Ieno (biologist) offers 20-25 statistical courses per year, both online and onsite. The courses are non-technical and focus on the practical application of a wide range of statistical techniques. See this pdf file for a detailed description.
In a hybrid course, we teach both onsite participants and online attendees simultaneously. Below are our upcoming hybrid and live online courses :
- Online course: Analysing Aquaculture Data in R. 4-8 May 2026. Flyer.
- Hybrid course (onsite and online): Introduction to GLMM and GAMM with R. Maastricht University. Department of System Earth Science. Brightlands Campus Venlo, The Netherlands. 17-21 August 2026. 09:00-16:00 CEST. Flyer.
- Online course: Bayesian Time Series Analysis - GAMs, random walks, and hierarchical time series in inlabru -. 7-11 September 2026. 14:00-20:00 UK time. Flyer.
Books
Our course material is based on a series of 14 statistical textbooks. Three books were published by Springer. One book has been translated into Chinese and Japanese.
We offer a "View-only" package for university and institutional libraries. Get access to all our books for all your employees.
Scientific papers
We have contributed to a large number of scientific papers, which has resulted in a long list of co-authored papers. In particular, we are first-authors of one of the most cited and downloaded papers in ecology: A protocol for data exploration to avoid common statistical problems. Zuur et al. (2010). This paper is labeled as a 'Hot Paper' in the field of Environment/Ecology by Science Watch at Thomson Reuters. Latest publications:
- Aars, J., Ieno, E. N., Andersen, M., Derocher, A. E., Wiig, Ø., & Zuur, A. F. (2026).Body condition among Svalbard Polar bears Ursus maritimus during a period of rapid loss of sea ice. (2026). Scientific Reports, 16:2182. Media coverage: BBC. The Telegraph. The Independent. Yahoo News.
Consultancy
Highland Statistics provides statistical consultancy in various forms, e.g. help with paper submission or referee comments, guidance with statistical analyses, or analysis of data. Our input can be anything from a few hours to large projects of 50+ days. Our customers include the United Nations, NIOZ, Wageningen University, Institute of Marine Research, DFO, JNCC, Rijkswaterstaat, DEWLP, among many others.
Research
It seems like nobody comes to us for the easy stuff! Half of our consultancy work dives into territories where off-the-shelf methods just don’t cut it, often turning our projects into full-blown statistical research. And more often than not, these brain teasers end up as scientific papers!