A photo of the north side of Spermaceti Cove taken by B. Astorino.
The first counting took place on June 5, 2017, a cloudy day with mild heat. There were deer tracks spotted and lots of birds flying around, which could have disrupted the crabs. We drove to the Spermaceti Cove during lunch with Ms. McDonald. At the site, Ms. McDonald gave a run-down on fiddler crabs and how they mate. On the boardwalk, I noticed many deer tracks in the mud. The vegetation on the North side of the site could not have been more than a foot tall. Even with a little bit of vegetation, it was difficult to spot the small fiddler crabs. I really needed to stare at the site and not move in order to, as Ms. McD says, allow the crabs to come to life. Once the counting began, it was easy to keep going. I counted in sections, every two posts being one section. D. D'Albero counted 149 burrows on the south side of Spermaceti cove, while B. Astorino counted 243 fiddler crabs on the north side.
The fifth count took place on August 4, 2017, a very beautiful, sunny day, with a few clouds. Because B. Astorino and D. D'Albero were both unavailable, M. Vasques stepped in and counted 178 crabs on the south side. Due to lots of vegetation on the north side, she did not count any crabs there.
Statistical Methods As this is a longitudinal study, many data sets over the years must be analyzed in order to prove or disprove the hypothesis. The 2017-2018 data set will be compared to the baseline data set that was compiled between 2016 and 2017. As the years progress and this project continues to be conducted, more and more data will be compiled, allowing the conclusions to the experiment to be backed by more data. Normal distribution will be used in order to see if there are any outliers in the data, or any unusually high or low counts. These outliers have the potential to throw off the data analysis. Standard deviation and variance alike will be useful when determining either the spread or the closeness of the data points. A higher standard deviation means that there is more spread among the data, decreasing the potential for correlation among the data set. This indicates that there would be a smaller chance of a trend among the data. Variance is the distance each data po...
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