Preface: Beyond the Null Hypothesis -- 1. An Ecological Scenario and the Tools of the Ecological Detective -- 2. Alternative Views of the Scientific Method and of Modeling -- 3. Probability and Probability Models: Know Your Data -- 4. Incidental Catch in Fisheries: Seabirds in the New Zealand Squid Trawl Fishery -- 5. The Confrontation: Sum of Squares -- 6. The Evolutionary Ecology of Insect Oviposition Behavior -- 7. The Confrontation: Likelihood and Maximum Likelihood -- 8. Conservation Biology of Wildebeest in the Serengeti -- 9. The Confrontation: Bayesian Goodness of Fit -- 10. Management of Hake Fisheries in Namibia Motivation -- 11. The Confrontation: Understanding How the Best Fit Is Found