Post #4 Sampling Strategies

Overall, the most efficient method of sampling for my results was the random sampling. On common species, it had a percentage error of 7.5% versus 13.8% for systematic and 43.6% for haphazard sampling. It also had the best percentage error at 72.4% for the rare species, versus ? (did not account for the species) for systematic and 198.2% for haphazard sampling. Considering the fact that random and systematic had only a 27 minute difference in sampling times (12h38m vs 12h11m), it shows how much more efficient and accurate random sampling can be in both achieving results and saving time and resources in research. Haphazard sampling was the least accurate in terms of percentage error, but visiting the 5 sites versus the 24 of the other methods only took two hours and forty minutes. One notable thing I encountered while doing this activity is I found was that despite the 43.6% percentage error of common species for haphazard sample, this was due to skew because the two most common species having percentage errors of 86.25% and 0.925%, and that last value was the most accurate of any species using any method, the second smallest percentage error being 3.2%. Another interesting find was that systematic sampling had relatively similar accuracy for the common species, but it did did not register the two rare species that both random and haphazard sampling did. This is interesting because despite the fact that the haphazard sample sites were strategically chosen, but it only had a fifth of the quadrants as systematic sampling and a much higher percentage error of common species. What these results showcase is the strength of random sampling and what effect human bias can have on the results of sampling.