Wildlife: Mallard Ducks and Canada Geese For mallard ducks and Canada geese, what percentage of nests are successful (at least one offspring survives)?

Studies in Montana, Illinois, Wyoming, Utah, and California gave the following percentages of successful nests (Reference: The Wildlife Society Press, Washington, D.C.).

x: Percentage success for mallard duck nests 56 85 52 13 39 y: Percentage success for Canada goose nests 24 53 60 69 18

(a) Use a calculator to verify that Sx 5 245;

Sx2 514,755; Sy 5 224; and Sy2 512,070.

(b) Use the results of part

(a) to compute the sample mean, variance, and standard deviation for x, the percent of successful mallard nests.

(c) Use the results of part

(a) to compute the sample mean, variance, and standard deviation for y, the percent of successful Canada goose nests.

(d) Interpretation Use the results of parts

(b) and

(c) to compute the coefficient of variation for successful mallard nests and Canada goose nests.

Write a brief explanation of the meaning of these numbers. What do these results say about the nesting success rates for mallards compared to those of Canada geese? Would you say one group of data is more or less consistent than the other?

Explain.

AppendixLO1