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#1 2006-02-28 05:24:40

eeyore25
Member
Registered: 2006-02-28
Posts: 2

statistics anyone help?

hi, all i'm new here, so some help would be fab, i'm doing a statistics assignment and need a little guidance. I need to decide out of two of my results which is best which i'm ok with but then i need to say whether there are any other factors i need to take into account any ideas anyone on what factors i need to consider?
your help would be much appreciated thank you xx:)

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#2 2006-02-28 05:31:44

mikau
Member
Registered: 2005-08-22
Posts: 1,504

Re: statistics anyone help?

I've never studied statistics, but those who have can't help you untill you tell them the actual problem.

Type up the problem, so if someone comes along who knows the answer, they can answer it for you.


A logarithm is just a misspelled algorithm.

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#3 2006-02-28 05:35:33

eeyore25
Member
Registered: 2006-02-28
Posts: 2

Re: statistics anyone help?

ah thankyou, thought i'd do that but wasn't sure! ok here goes i have to decide out of two fertilisers which has performed best then which i'm fine with have decided on that part ok, then i have to say what other factors might be taken into account.

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#4 2006-02-28 07:15:01

mikau
Member
Registered: 2005-08-22
Posts: 1,504

Re: statistics anyone help?

Well I'm sure different plants require different types of nutrients more then others. So the fact that one fertilizer worked better then other may mean nothing if your using it on different types of plants. The same results are not garenteed.

Crop rotation. Its also notable that plants tend to absorb the types of nutrients they use most. So eventually the nutrients in the ground can be eaten up and eventually the plants won't grow well anymore. This is why some farmers use crop rotation. Planting the crops in different spots each season. This helps prevent the plants from eating up all the nutrients in one spot. Different plants absorb diffferent types of nutrients so this helps to distribute it evenly. Anyways, the fact that one fertilizer worked better then another, might have been effected by how much nutrients was in the ground from the get go.

Just idea's...


A logarithm is just a misspelled algorithm.

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#5 2006-02-28 09:17:45

Ricky
Moderator
Registered: 2005-12-04
Posts: 3,791

Re: statistics anyone help?

This sounds more like a science problem than statistics.  There aren't really any outside factors when it comes to statistics, but when it comes to collecting data (science), there are (hypothetically) infinitely many.

To add on what mikau said about crop rotation, they also plant crops which puts nutrients back in the ground, such as peanuts.

But here are the things I would consider:

Enviornment: Could some plants get longer amounts of sunlight?  Or more water?  Is the soil composition mostly homogenous or is it heterogenous?  Could there by varying amounts of humidity?  How about oxygen/carbondioxide concentrations in air?  Did these vary?

People: In any step that includes a person doing something (anything) there is the possibility for human error.  But the specifics would be pretty much be methods for watering and measuring.  Can you find any possible error in these?

Many of these are nit-picks, that is, they probably really don't matter.  But even so, they could matter.


"In the real world, this would be a problem.  But in mathematics, we can just define a place where this problem doesn't exist.  So we'll go ahead and do that now..."

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