24 Hagen et al 2011 estimated the home range sizes of 4 bumb

24. Hagen et al. (2011) estimated the home range sizes of 4 bumblebees (Bombus) by fitting them with tiny radio transmitters and tracking their positions by plane and ground surveys. They estimated the mean home range size to be 20.7 11.6 ha, where the number after the sign refers to standard error of the mean.

a. Provide a description for the standard error. What does it measure?

b. What assumption are we making when calculating the standard error of the mean?

c. What would you recommend the researchers do next to reduce the standard error of their estimate of the mean home range size?

Solution

a)

Standard error is the change in mean with different experiments

Standard error is the measure of deviation from mean

b)

finite size of sample and Defined probability distribution

c)

standard error can be reduced by increasing the size of sample