Fishery statistics on the microcomputer: A basic version of Hasselbad's NORMSEP Program - BOBP/MAG/3

Abstract

This paper provides an outline of a mathematical method to analyse overlapping normal distributions. Separations of mixtures of normal distributions is frequently required in fisheries biological analysis, as in the case of length frequency distribution of fishes. Several methods are available for this. The method presented in this paper was originally developed by V Hasselblad and has been cast in its present form by D Pauly and N David. It was originally published as ICLARM contributio n No. 193. The new version, presented in this paper, is written in Microsoft BASIC and can be implemented on a large variety of microcomputers. The specific version presented here can run without modification on an Apple Ile microcomputer (with CP/M-80 operating system). The Program uses up to 12 K of RAM. This paper grew out of a training course on the use of computers in fishery resources management. The course was organized by the project “Marine Fishery Resources Management in the Bay of Bengal” in cooperation with member-countries Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Maldives. Dr. Daniel Pauly of ICLARM and Mr J Hertel-Wulff of BOBP worked on the version presented in this paper.