How Graphic!Heart-throbbing tales of tables, graphs, and chart You're shopping in the mall with friends, but your thoughts keep wandering Wandering See also Adventurousness, Bohemianism, Journey, Quest. Ahasuerus German name for the Wandering Jew. [Ger. Lit. to your science project. It's due in two weeks! Unfortunately, you still have no clue what experiment to do. Loaded with shopping bags and packages, you trudge up the stairs and escalators. Soon you begin to feel the bags weighing you down, and your heart starts pounding hard. Judging from your friends' red faces, they're feeling the burn, too. Could you actually be getting a workout Workout Informal repayment or loan forgiveness arrangement between a borrower and creditors. workout 1. The process of a debtor's meeting a loan commitment by satisfying altered repayment terms. just from shopping? Hmm ... Maybe that could be your science project: What's the effect of walking up stairs See Upstairs in the Vocabulary. See also: Stair and escalators, with and without the weight of shopping bags, on your heart rate? Finally clued in, you can't wait to give your project a go. But hold on! The mall is a casual sort of place, but that doesn't mean you can just jot your experiment findings on the back of your hand. Time to get organized! GOOF-PROOF RECORDING Your experiment will toss you lots of numbers. To record test results accurately and efficiently (so that you don't have to keep re-testing and miss the 7:30 movie), you need to write them on something that is simple to read and easy to follow--like a data table. A data table should include all the variables in your experiment: the independent variable, or variable you change on purpose (in this case, the type of activity), and the dependent variable--the variable that responds when you change the independent variable (in this case, heart rate). Under the independent-variable column, list the types of activities you plan to test: climbing the stairs without weight, climbing the stairs with a 4.5-kg (10-lb) bag, climbing the up escalator escalator Moving staircase used as transportation between floors or levels in stores, airports, subways, and other mass pedestrian areas. The name was first applied to a moving stairway shown at the Paris Exposition of 1900. without weight, climbing the up escalator with a 4.5-kg bag. Now that you're geared up, let's plug in some data from the Mall-Climbing Experiment. GET GRAPHIC All those numbers sure look nice, but what do they mean? To visualize your findings, you'll need to get a little graphic. A graph allows you to spot trends in your data. For your mall-climbing expedition, a bar graph works best. That's because each activity you did is separate and distinct, or discontinuous discontinuous /dis·con·tin·u·ous/ (dis?kon-tin´u-us) 1. interrupted; intermittent; marked by breaks. 2. discrete; separate. 3. lacking logical order or coherence. . A separate bar can represent your average heart rate doing each activity. Now, say you don't even break a sweat going up one flight of stairs Noun 1. flight of stairs - a stairway (set of steps) between one floor or landing and the next flight of steps, flight staircase, stairway - a way of access (upward and downward) consisting of a set of steps . For a real workout, you decide to start from the basement and climb all the way to the top floor of the mall. Your new research question could be: How does the number of flights you've climbed affect the time it takes to get from floor to floor? The independent variable is the number of flights, which is a continuous variable. That means it increases continually as you go up each floor. A line graph In graph theory, the line graph L(G) of an undirected graph G is a graph such that
EASY AS PIE After huffing huffing, n the inhalation of common household products such as glue, solvents, hair spray, or gasoline to obtain a temporary euphoria. Specifically, huffing refers to soaking a rag, toilet paper, or sock in the household substance and inhaling. and puffing An opinion or judgment that is not made as a representation of fact. Puffing is generally an expression or exaggeration made by a salesperson or found in an advertisement that concerns the quality of goods offered for sale. all the way to the top floor, you vow never to climb another flight of stairs again. From now on, you'll ride only escalators! What are other mall rats' favorite way to go? There's another research question. After surveying 100 avid AVID Cardiology A clinical trial–Antiarrhythmics Versus Implantable Defibrillators that compared the effect of implantable defibrillators vs the best medical therapy–antiarrhythmics for survivors of MI or those with nonsustained ventricular tachycardia shoppers, you find 65 percent are in sync with you and opt for the escalator, 25 percent prefer the elevator elevator, in machinery elevator, in machinery, device for transporting people or goods from one level to another. The term is applied to the enclosed structures as well as the open platforms used to provide vertical transportation in buildings, large ships, , but only 10 percent go for the stairs. These numbers call for a pie chart A graphical representation of information in which each unit of data is represented as a pie-shaped piece of a circle. See business graphics. . A pie chart is simply a circle divided into wedge-shaped sections. The circle represents 100 percent (here, the 100 shoppers you surveyed), and the wedges represent data that are percentages of a whole. So, the wedge representing escalator fans should take up the biggest chunk, 65 percent of the circle. WORK IT! This big blob of info isn't meant to give you a heart attack. If you find all this a little mind-blowing, don't panic
Don't panic may refer to:
After you've mastered them, keep going! Pictures and maps are great data-enhancing visuals. And if you're really adventurous ad·ven·tur·ous adj. 1. Inclined to undertake new and daring enterprises. 2. Hazardous; risky. ad·ven , try taping your experiment and results on video (bound to be a Sci-NON-Fi hit)! Just remember: Tables, charts, and graphs are NOT exercises invented by your teacher to torture you. They are here to help you understand your research so that you can WOW everyone with your dazzling finds. Great exercise! Mall-Climbing Experiment The Gear: Staircase staircase - jaggies * UP escalator * 4.5 kilograms (10 lbs) of weight * shopping bag * clock or timer timer, n radiographic timing device that functions as an automatic exposure timer and a switch to control the current to the high-tension transformer and filament transformer. The face of the timer is calibrated in seconds and fractions of seconds. * paper * pencil The Steps: 1. Go to a mall (or other place) with both stairs and escalator. 2. Sit still for 10 minutes. Take your pulse for 10 seconds, then multiply the number of beats by 6.This is your heart rate at rest. 3. Repeat Step 2 twice. 4. Walk up the stairs. Keep your steps at a constant speed. 5. When you reach the top, take your pulse and record the data on your table. 6. Return to the bottom of the stairs and rest for another 10 minutes. 7. Repeat Steps 4 through 6 twice. 8. Repeat Steps 4 through 7, this time carrying a bag with a 4.5-kg weight. 9. Repeat Steps 4 through 7, walking up the escalator. 10. Repeat Steps 4 through 7, walking up the escalator and carrying a 4.5-kg bag. 11. Calculate an average heart rate for each mode of floor-climbing. Record on your data table. 12. Graph away! To make a data table: 1. On a plain sheet of paper, draw a data table as shown here. 2. Give your table a title that identifies your variables. 3. Label the column on the left as the independent variable (type of activity). Underneath, list each type of activity you used for the independent variable (resting, climbing stairs, etc.). 4. Label the columns to the right to track the dependent variable (heart rate). Draw boxes under these columns in which you can record the result of each trial for each activity. 5. Include a column to record the average heart rate for each activity. To calculate the average heart rate, add the heart rates for each activity, then divide the total by the number of trials.
The Effect of Different Activities on Heart Rate
Type of Activity Heart Rate (in beats per minute)
Trial 1 Trial 2 Trial 3 Average
Resting 66 72 66 68
Climbing stairs 108 102 96 102
Climbing stairs 126 132 126 128
with 4.5-kg weight
Walking up 84 90 84 86
escalator
Walking up 108 114 114 112
escalator with
4.5-kg weight
To make a bar graph: 1. On graph paper, draw a set of axes axes [L., Gr.] plural of axis. The straight lines which intersect at right angles and on which graphs are drawn. Usually the horizontal axis is the x-axis and the vertical one the y-axis. Called also axes of reference. (x and y). 2. Give your bar graph a title. 3. Label the horizontal (x) axis with your independent variable (type of activity), including the activities you used for the independent variable (resting, climbing stairs, etc.). 4. Label the vertical (y) axis with your dependent variable (heart rate) and a scale that marks the values of the dependent variable. 5. For each independent variable, draw a solid bar to the height of the corresponding value of the dependent variable. Example: The average heart rate at rest was 68 beats per minute beats per minute Cardiac pacing The unit of measure for the frequency of heart depolarizations or contractions each minute–or pulse rate . Draw a bar above the "resting" label on the x-axis to the 68 beats-per-minute mark on the y-axis. [GRAPH OMITTED] To make a line graph: 1. On graph paper, draw a set of axes (x and y). 2. Give your line graph a title. 3. Label the x-axis with your independent variable (number of floors climbed) and a scale with the values on the x-axis. 4. Label the y-axis with your dependent variable (climbing time) and a scale that includes all the values of the dependent variable. 5. Plot a point on the graph for each piece of data. Example: Your average time to get to floor 3 is I 5 seconds. To locate this point in your graph, draw an imaginary vertical line from the floor-3 mark on the x-axis. Then, draw an imaginary horizontal line (Descriptive Geometry & Drawing) a constructive line, either drawn or imagined, which passes through the point of sight, and is the chief line in the projection upon which all verticals are fixed, and upon which all vanishing points are found. See also: Horizontal from the 15-second mark on the y-axis. Plot the point where the lines intersect In a relational database, to match two files and produce a third file with records that are common in both. For example, intersecting an American file and a programmer file would yield American programmers. . When you've plotted the points for all your data, connect the points. [GRAPH OMITTED] To make a pie chart: 1. Draw a circle with a compass. 2. Give your pie chart a title. 3. Mark the center with a point; this is where each pie wedge will start. 4. Measure a wedge for each independent variable (stairs, escalator, elevator). First, convert your data from percentages to angle degrees. Example: If 25% of shoppers prefer the elevators, the pie wedge for elevators would be 25% of the 360 [degrees] circle, or 90 [degrees]. Then, position a protractor protractor Instrument for constructing and measuring plane angles. The simplest protractor is a semicircular disk marked in degrees from 0° to 180°. A more complex protractor, for plotting position on navigation charts, is called a three-arm protractor, or station at the center point of the circle. Mark 0 [degree] and 90 [degrees] angles with points on the edge of the circle. Draw a line from these points to the center of the circle. 5. Label the wedge (include its percentages). 6. Measure your next wedge from the edge of the first. When finished, the entire circle should be filled. [CHART OMITTED]3 |
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