MathBench > Environmental Science

Sampling

 

Interpreting honeybees

How will we interpret our bee-in-a-zucchini-patch data set as a whole?

By looking closer at the data, we can begin to speculate how bees might view dandelions. Put simply, do bees like dandelions?   

Let’s consider three possibilities:

  1. Bees love dandelions -- in that case, we'd expect bees to visit dandelions alot, even when there aren't very many dandelions, so
    % dandelion visits % dandelions in field
  2. Bees hate dandelions -- in that case, we'd expect bees to avoid dandelions, even when there are alot of dandelions in a field, so
    % dandelion visits % dandelions in field
  3. Bees don't care one way or the other about dandelions -- in that case, we'd expect bees to visit dandelions randomly -- in other words, about as often as dandelions appear in the field, so
    % dandelion visits % dandelions in field

 

So, remember our bee data:

The bee's path d z z d z d d z z z d z d z z z d d z z

Dandelions in field = 10%

Dandelion visits by bees = 40%

 
x
This is a somewhat tricky concept, so you might need to go through the reasoning a couple of times. It may help also to think of it in less technical terms. For example: The Hatfield’s and McCoy's are both large families -- you can't help but run into one of them every time you go to town. BUT, if you never see a Hatfield and a McCoy at the same time and place, you might suspect that the two families are avoiding one another:

% times Hatfields occur in town: large

% of times Hatfields occur with McCoy's: small

Conclusion: avoidance