# 5.5: Exercises


Behavioral and ecological factors influence dispersion. Uniform patterns of dispersion are generally a result of interactions between individuals like competition and territoriality.

1. In ecology a uniform distribution of an organism may result when the organism exhibits territorial behavior that keeps most organisms. In one study, a portion of a field was divided into a $$20 \times \20$$ grid and a count made of the number of organisms in each unit of the grid giving the results seen below.

number of organisms in plot frequency
2 58
3 51
4 60
5 64
6 54
7 52
8 61

Create a plot similar to that in 5.4.1 and comment on your results.

2. Chlorine has two isotopes, 35Cl (75.8% abundance) and 37Cl (24.2% abundance). Create a plot similar to that in Figure 5.4.2 for the molecule PCB 77, a chlorinated compound with the formula C12H6Cl4 and comment on your results.

3. A radioactive decay process has a background level of 3 emissions per minute and follows a Poisson distribution. The number of emissions per minute was monitored for one hour giving the following results

emissions per minute frequency of event
0 3
1 9
2 13
3 16
4 9
5 5
6 3
7 1
8 1
9 0
10 0

Use this data to create a plot similar to that in Figure 5.4.3 and comment on your results

4. Using the penny data from Exercise 3.4.5, create a plot similar to that in Figure 5.4.4 using all pennies minted after 1982 and comment on your results.

5. Use this link to access a case study on data analysis and complete the first four investigations included in Part IV: Ways to Model Data.

This page titled 5.5: Exercises is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by David Harvey.