This was an interesting tool to compare the difference between transect, random, and haphazard sampling. The results of the densities and percent errors show that there is error that occurs for all methods.
Surprisingly the haphazard sampling showed the least percent error for both the most and least common species. I suppose this means that it was the most accurate. I would have thought that one of the systematic sampling methods would have been more accurate across the board. For the haphazard technique I tried to sample with an even distribution clicking one cell top left then lower right and lower left and so on. Perhaps I did a good job of sampling evenly across the entire site. Transect sampling vastly overestimate the eastern hemlock species while random sampling did not find a single striped maple, so this species is missing in the record for this technique.
There was consistently the least amount of error with the more abundant species (Eastern Hemlock) across all techniques.
The fastest technique was the haphazard sampling with the transect sampling being a close second. The random sampling by far was the longest method to complete.
The following graph shows the results of this experiment.
