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 **
** Describe what you see on your first 10 clicks **
The window below the button displays the time of each click and the difference in time between each click is displayed to the right. I believe it is similar to displaying split times on a stopwatch. Each time you click it doesn't start over but rather lets you know how long it's been since you began.
** Your TIMER data from 20 fast clicks **
1 629.6133 629.6133
2 629.7852 .171875
3 629.9727 .1875
4 630.1602 .1875
5 630.332 .171875
6 630.5195 .1875
7 630.6914 .171875
8 630.8789 .1875
9 631.082 .203125
10 631.2695 .1875
11 631.457 .1875
12 631.6602 .203125
13 631.8477 .1875
14 632.0508 .203125
15 632.2539 .203125
16 632.4414 .1875
17 632.6758 .234375
18 632.8633 .1875
19 633.0664 .203125
20 633.2852 .21875
21 633.4883 .203125
22 633.6602 .171875
** Your average time interval for 20 time intervals **
0.19375
Since I had a couple of numbers that came up time and time again, I just made a chart with each time and how many times it showed up. For example I had 0.1875 to show up 9 times. Once I had each number and how many times it showed up, I multiplied the numbers by their frequency and then added everything together. Once I got the total time difference for all clicks, I divided by 20 to get my average time.
** Your frequency distribution for the 20 time intervals (interval, number of times it was observed) **
.171875, 3
.1875, 9
.203125, 6
.21875, 1
.234375, 1
** Your general comment to this point **
** Why did you observe only certain time intervals? **
The timer is probably set to record times at certain predetermined intervals. Depending on which interval your click is closest to determines what is displayed in the timer box. This is suppose to happen and it does not mean that the program is flawed or useless.
** What did you see when you looked at the differences between time successive time intervals? **
The last column tells you whether you were quicker or slower than you last click and by how much. Since the numbers in the last column repeat in frequency it is no wonder that the time interval numbers can be the same for different clicks.
** Your time intervals for 7 complete breaths: **
8.25
10.26563
9.285156
8.578125
12.59375
9.359375
9.375
** Your general comment to this point: **
** Why did you rarely, if ever, observe that same time interval twice? **
When there is a longer time between clicks there is a greater opportunity to get different numbers. If the timer program rounds then with faster clicks there is only so many numbers that it can choose so the frequency a number occurs would be greater.
** Do you think this program is accurate to .1 or .01 ... **
b. The TIMER program is capable of determining the time between two events accurately to within about .01 second.
I believe it is accurate to about .01 second because when you look at the times for fast clicks, up to the second decimal place there is a difference in time (ex .18 , .20, .21) However after the hundredths place the numbers are the same. There are no variations from .1875 when .18 is in the hundredths place. There are no variations from .203125 when .20 is in the hundredths place.
** Copy of a few lines of your spreadsheet from the TIMER program. **
1 5.953125 5.953125
2 15.375 9.421875
3 26.1875 10.8125
4 35.51563 9.328125
5 45.04688 9.53125
** **
30-35 minutes.
** **
Very good work.