Your work on timer program has been received. Scroll down through the document to see any comments I might have inserted, and my final comment at the end.
Your General Comment
Describe what you see on your first 10 clicks
The first click shows how long the program has been open and it is shown in both columns. Each consecutive click shows how long the program has been open in the left column and how long it has been since the previous click of the mouse.
Your TIMER data from 20 fast clicks
1 1397.41 1397.41
2 1399.48 2.070313
3 1401.215 1.734375
4 1402.738 1.523438
5 1404.676 1.9375
6 1405.949 1.273438
7 1407.043 1.09375
8 1410.246 3.203125
9 1412.066 1.820313
10 1414.402 2.335938
11 1416.207 1.804688
12 1417.949 1.742188
13 1419.957 2.007813
14 1421.895 1.9375
15 1423.598 1.703125
16 1424.434 .8359375
17 1426.191 1.757813
18 1428.184 1.992188
19 1431.348 3.164063
20 1432.855 1.507813
Your average time interval for 20 time intervals
1.86554308
I calculated this average of the intervals through the use of Microsoft Excel with the =average feature of the workbook.
Your frequency distribution for the 20 time intervals (interval, number of times it was observed)
1397.41, 1
This is not a time interval between consecutive quick clicks
2.070313, 1
1.734375, 1
1.523438, 1
1.9375, 2
1.273438, 1
1.09375, 1
3.203125, 1
1.820313, 1
2.335938, 1
1.804688, 1
1.742188, 1
2.007813, 1
1.703125, 1
0.8359375, 1
1.757813, 1
1.992188, 1
3.164063, 1
1.507813, 1
Your general comment to this point
Why did you observe only certain time intervals?
The Timer program, my guess, rounds the interval to easily allow for comparison from one timing to another.
What did you see when you looked at the differences between time successive time intervals?
The intervals can usually be rounded to the same number such as the 0.01563 rounded from the 0.015625 or is a multiple of 0.015625.
Your time intervals for 7 complete breaths:
15.33594
5.765625
7.164063
7.976563
8.304688
9.460938
10.23438
9.296875
9.625
9.8125
Your general comment to this point:
Why did you rarely, if ever, observe that same time interval twice?
Our breathing rates are limited by the capacity of our lungs and we would breath at different rates considerably different then just trying to randomly click the mouse for readings.
Do you think this program is accurate to .1 or .01 ...
.001 because the rounding occurs at the ten thousands place.1
Copy of a few lines of your spreadsheet from the TIMER program.
1 15.33594 15.33594
2 21.10156 5.765625
3 28.26563 7.164063
4 36.24219 7.976563
5 44.54688 8.304688
This looks good. Please answer the following and submit as 'answers to timer questions':
An investigation of the time intervals reported be all students indicates that all time intervals are multiples of 0.00390625.
What fraction of a second does this correspond to?
Another program indicates that, though all times are multiples of the interval given above, an individual computer can detect the difference between two events that occur .015625 second apart, but no closer. That is, if the computer is 'triggered' by one event, it can't be 'triggered' again until .015625 seconds have passed.
If I time a single interval by triggering the timer with two precisely spaced electronic signals which are, in fact separated by, say, 3.2991 seconds, what will the TIMER indicate as the interval?
Will the TIMER tend to read 'high' or 'low', and by how much?
How much error do you think TIMER will therefore give us when we find the mean of a series of 10 consecutive 'clicks', as in this experiment?