One of the optional assignments in my Science Methods class this term is to make consistent observations over time. We ended up not having to do this assignment, but I liked the idea of it and did it anyway. I made observations on the dog park behind our apartment. We already watched the dogs, so why not watch them for science!
Everyday at 4 p.m. I recorded the number of dogs in the park and the temperature. I was interested to see if their were correlations between day of the week, temperature and number of dogs.
Here are my findings (I did miss observations on some day, but the graphs have omitted them to better show trends and represent chronological observations.)
| Trends in results show a general correlation between temperature and number of dogs. |
| Scatter plot shows average number of dogs trends higher for higher temperatures and looks somewhat like a sitting pigeon. |
| As temperature decreases on Sundays so do dogs. |
| Perhaps people coming down with the Mondays is why there isn't really any correlation on Mondays. |
| I'm not sure why they curve opposite ways on Tuesday. |
| A strong correlation on Wednesdays. Notice the only time dogs came to the park was when the temperature was above zero! |
| People seemed to get bored with being outside on Thursdays, regardless of temperature, thus dog numbers dropped with each observation. |
| A noticeable correlation and only one zero reading. My guess: that was the day Star Wars Episode I 3D primiered. |
| A correlation and always lots of dogs. Dogs must love Saturdays! |
No comments:
Post a Comment