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Blog Post 8: Tables and Graphs
Create a blog post discussing your table or graph. Did you have any difficulties organizing, aggregating or summarizing your data? Was the outcome as you expected? Did your data reveal anything unexpected or give you any ideas for further exploration?
As my data set was small there was not a need for any graphs such as a boxplot or scatter plots. I used pie charts and bar graphs to show the relative frequency and relative densities calculated in my study- to show an overall picture of what tree patterns were on each substrate. I did have difficulty with the calculations at first as they all seemed foreign to me. At the end of the calculations, I had a bunch of numbers that I was overwhelmed with, trying to figure out how I could tell the story I was trying to with all of the decimal places. I found myself wanting to make graphs more complicated then they needed to be. To look for data that may show something more then the simple story I was telling ( jack pine are in higher frequency and density amongst bedrock). Stepping back from trying to compare myself to the reports we have been reading in class, and looking at what my project actually was – a simple observational study helped give me some clarity. This helped in simply doing the calculations and making the bar graphs without complicating the paper with unneeded graphs and tables. Though I do hope that I represented the data to its fullest. I could have potentially done more with the DBH data.
The outcome of the experiment was what I expected. It would be interesting to measure distances between jack pine populations on different bedrock areas to see if there is a preferred spacing to avoid competition with each other.
