JungWoo Choi

4879395

BIOL 1001

Lab personal essay

Before talking about how a scientific conclusion made up, Id like to explain two types of
scientific study. An observational study is that researchers simply just collect data based on
what is observed. On the other hand, an experimental study is that researchers control data to
obtain what they want. Snapshot Serengeti Project is observational study because there was
no human intervention while the data has been collected. With the classified data into many
categories, I learned how to control the data into desired visible graph or table to support the
hypothesis: preys tend to group together in order to increase survival rate from predators.

The Snapshot Serengeti Project is basically that 230 cameras are taking photos when the
camera senses the movement of animal in the Serengeti National Park in northern Tanzania
for many years. These photos are collected in the database for any future animal study. Each
photo taken by camera is classified into many categories such as camera site, date, behavior
of animal (standing, eating, etc.). With JMP program, I was able to filter the categories, and
control categories to get a desired graph or table. For example, I collected the data of prey
and predators. Latitude and longitude data were taken to determine where the prey and
predators located, and constraints on date and time will give a position data of prey and
predators at specific time. Plugging desired species and constraint on date and time, I was
able to make a graph for each species where it was located, putting latitude as x-axis and
longitude as y-axis. According to the graph, prey tends to move together because the position
data of prey were at similar latitude and longitude. On the other hand, the positions of
predators were scattered, which represents that the predators do not group together.

As we can see on above, the scientific reasoning is important to determine whether the
hypothesis is true or not. Because hypothesis can be verified by data, it is not concrete and it
can be changed at any time, the scientific process will make the hypothesis concrete.
Furthermore, as the new observation or experiment made on the hypothesis, the hypothesis
might be updated in any time.