Systematic, random, and haphazard area-sampling methods were used in the virtual tutorial to sample the forest community of Snyder-Middleswarth State Park.
Systematic sampling was the most efficient, with the fastest time of 12 hours and 35 minutes. Haphazard sampling took 12 hours and 57 minutes, while simple random sampling was the slowest method with a time of 13 hours and 12 minutes.
Table 1. Percent errors of sampled tree species densities for the three area-sampling methods.
| Eastern Hemlock | Sweet Birch | Striped Maple | White Pine | |
| Systematic | 20% | 18.3% | 8.6% | 90.5% |
| Random | 3% | 19.1% | 8.6% | 52.4% |
| Haphazard | 17.5% | 25.1% | 151.4% | 4.8% |
| Average | 13.5% | 20.8% | 56.2% | 49.2% |
The two most common species sampled were Eastern Hemlock and Sweet Birch, while the two least common were Striped Maple and White Pine. The more abundant species generally had lower percent errors, while the rare species had high percent errors. As the rare species were measured less frequently, the small sample size caused large variation in the collected data.
The average percent errors for Systematic, Random, and Haphazard sampling methods were 30.9%, 16.9%, and 34.4%, respectively. From this data, the random sampling method appears to be the most accurate technique. However, a large variation in the percent errors and outliers can skew the averages. Upon reviewing the blog posts of other students who performed the same virtual sampling experiment, I found that the average percent errors for the three sampling methods were generally inconsistent, and no conclusion can be drawn on the relative accuracy of the strategies.