Posted by:
casichelydia
at Tue Jun 19 21:39:05 2007 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by casichelydia ]
Nah, I didn't mean that, but I could just as easily be interpreting the goal of your graph wrong.
You want the prediction line to show the average weight of hatchlings you produce on any given day post-hatching.
What you want to do to get that info is measure all your geckos for each day you give a set of measurements. For example, the graph makes it look as though one gecko was measured for weight on day one of its life, three were measured on day two of their lives, two geckos were measured on day three and so forth. To take an appropriate average with that prediction line, you'd need to have the same number of weights (same number of geckos measured, blue data points) for day one, two, three, and so forth. Otherwise, "extra" data points (those second and third dots for some days) will skew your average.
You also want to keep your measurement interval constant, meaning don't skip days. There are no data points for days ~ 12, 28, 29 on the graph. If your measurement interval is a day, you want to measure once each day from the day of hatching for each gecko until a set age (day of life) when you stop measuring. If it's every three days, then you want to measure each three days from the day of hatching for each gecko, and skip the same two day interval for each set of three days through the given animal's life.
I'm not trying to poke holes or trivialize what you've done, because I think you must either be a biology student or have an interest in detail not common to the majority of herpetoculturists. Just trying to spread the wealth of hair-splitting, tedious awareness I gained in biostats courses!
>>>Thank you for your input. I'm not exactly sure what you mean. I interpreted it as weight each hatchling on the same day... example, all hatchlings are weighed on Days 3, 5, 7, 9, and 11 of their existence. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
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