Which technique had the fastest estimated sampling time?
Systematic: 12 hours 36 minutes
Random: 12 hours, 9 minutes
Haphazard: 13 hours, 5 minutes
Random has the fastest estimated sampling time
Compare the percentage error of the different strategies for the two most common and two rarest species. Did the accuracy change with species abundance?
| Percent Error (%) | ||||
| Systematic | Random | Haphazard | ||
| Western Hemlock | 10.7 | 13.9 | 35.3 | |
| Sweet Birch | 22.6 | 18.5 | 22.5 | |
| Striped Maple | 51.4 | 100.0 | 82.9 | |
| White Pine | 4.8 | 3.6 | 185.7 | |
Accuracy generally increased with increased species abundance for the haphazard sampling technique (although it would be predicted that western hemlock would have higher accuracy than sweet birch). The accuracy was higher for more abundant species for systematic sampling when looking at the percentage error for the Western hemlock, sweet birch, and striped maple data; however, the white pine (lowest abundance) had the highest accuracy. For random sampling, the accuracy (with this data set) did not seem to be correlated to species abundance.
Was one sampling strategy more accurate than another?
No, one sampling strategy was not clearly more accurate based on this data set. Perhaps a larger sample size would reveal a pattern in accuracy and sampling strategy.