Phy 201
Your 'timer program' report has been received. Scroll down through the document to see any comments I might have inserted, and my final comment at the end.
** #$&* Your General Comment **
6/3 1:30
** #$&* Describe what you see on your first 10 clicks **
In the box on the far left, there is the time when the button was pushed; the column next to it has the time between each click. In the column on the far right, the numbers show a cumulative time and the time between each click directly adjacent to it.
** #$&*Your TIMER data from 20 fast clicks **
click 1st cumulative 2nd interval
1 0.53 0.53
2 0.67 0.14
3 0.795 0.125
4 0.951 0.156
5 1.092 0.141
6 1.248 0.156
7 1.388 0.14
8 1.544 0.156
9 1.669 0.125
10 1.794 0.125
11 1.95 0.156
12 2.09 0.14
13 2.246 0.156
14 2.418 0.172
15 2.558 0.14
16 2.714 0.156
17 2.87 0.156
18 3.026 0.156
19 3.166 0.14
20 3.291 0.125
21 3.416 0.125
22 3.556 0.14
** #$&*Your average time interval for 20 time intervals **
.161
All your quick-click intervals are less than .161 second. So this is not a reasonable result.
The problem is that you used a reasonable means to find the result, but overlooked the fact that .53 second is very clearly not a quick-click interval.
No need to correct; just take a lesson and be sure in the future to review the data you include in your analysis for reasonability. In this case, had you omitted that first interval, you would still have had 20 intervals, all representing quick clicks.
I got the average by dividing the total time (from the first column, 3.556) by the number of intervals I had (22).
** #$&*Your frequency distribution for the 20 time intervals (interval, number of times it was observed) **
.125, 5
.14, 6
.141, 1
.156, 8
.172, 1
.53, 1
** #$&*Your general comment to this point **
** #$&*Why did you observe only certain time intervals? **
No, it is just rounding off the data to the colsest 3 or 4 significan figues. The numbers were so close that it would take a ton of decimal places to show the differences. It is easuer and less space-consuming to round the numbers off.
** #$&*What did you see when you looked at the differences between time successive time intervals? **
It means that the differences between the intervals are very small and the program is rounding the numbers off because the differences are minute. Also, the program cannot really tell the difference between the very close intervals, so it just made them up.
** #$&*Your time intervals for 7 complete breaths: **
1.17
3.323
3.183
3.12
3.213
3.261
2.87
2.948
3.308
3.151
** #$&*Your general comment to this point: **
** #$&*Why did you rarely, if ever, observe that same time interval twice? **
The clicks were far enough away that there was an obvious difference between the intervals. Also, the intervals were long enough that the program did not have to make any numbers up, but used the real ones.
** #$&*Do you think this program is accurate to .1 or .01 ... **
a.
This is because, in the fast clicks, the only major difference was in the tenths place. Other than that the program was pulling random numbers and intervals because it could not tell the difference.
** #$&*Copy of a few lines of your spreadsheet from the TIMER program. **
1.17 1.17 1 1.17 1.17
4.493 3.323 2 4.493 3.323
** **
25 minutes
** **
I was using the applet, I hope that was okay...
That was fine. Your work was good, but be sure to see my notes.