The Jefferson Forest Project

Excel Spreadsheet

 

The department of Fish and Wildlife often tag deer to keep records on the population size in different Forest.  There are many reasons for tagging these deer.  When you sample the same forest over a period of years, the rise or fall of deer population can help scientist and wild life official determine different problems.  By keeping these records year after year, results can be compared and educated decisions can be made.   By doing so, game wardens can determine if deer are over populating different areas.  Hunting quotes for different areas can be determined and the over all health of the heard can be monitored.

 

Using 100 beans, the teacher is to mark some % with a red dot.   For example out of 100 beans mark 25 with a red mark.   Mix all of the beans together and explain to the class that in this container is the entire deer population for Jefferson Forest.   Together as a class, you will take out small random samples.  

 

Students will open a spreadsheet to keep track of the results.   Column A will be marked as Total number of deer in sample.   Column B is to be labeled Number of deer tagged.   After 10 or more samples, students are ready to see if they can determine the number of deer in the forest who have been tagged.

 

After taking samples for 10 or more samples , How would you determine what % of the deer that are tagged in the forest?  Using the Spread sheet use a function or write a formula that does this. 

Column C is labeled % of Deer tagged.   The formula would be = Number of deer tagged/ Total number of deer in sample.    Round your percents to the nearest tenth using the format cell options

 

Sample

Number of Sample

Number of deer tagged

Total number of deer in sample

% of Deer tagged

 

1

8

25

32.0

 

2

3

16

18.8

 

3

2

40

5.0

 

4

4

29

13.8

 

5

3

35

8.6

 

6

1

11

9.1

 

7

5

15

33.3

 

8

2

12

16.7

 

9

2

22

9.1

 

10

4

31

12.9

 

Total for ten days

34

236

15.92

 

 

In this sample about 15 out of 100 beans were marked.    The more samples the closer the percent  will come to the actual number of marked beans. 

 

One extension would be to ask the students to project the number of tagged deer if the population in the forest is 500, 1000, 5000, 10,000,