Heather J. Lynch, Sara Zeigler, Leslie Wells, Jonathan D. Ballou, and William F. Fagan. 2010. Survivorship patterns in captive mammalian populations: Implications for estimating population growth rates. Ecological Applications 20:2334–2345.

Appendix A. Beta-distribution moments and parameter estimation.

The mean and variance of the beta-distribution are related to the shape parameters α and β as

and

These relationships may be inverted to obtain the following relationships for parameter estimation

and

whereand s² are the sample mean and the baised sample varianve given by

and