EARTHWORMS AND ALUMINUM

WORMS OF STEEL

Discussion

            After looking at the graphs (graph 1 and graph 2) it became clear that the pattern of our data, was that there is no pattern. Despite the statistically significant difference between the number of worms from west of the dam to east of the damn, there is no correspondence to aluminum changes. The average earthworm count, and aluminum level vary from site to site, but their changes do not affect each other.

            After T testing the worm counts from west of the dam and the worm counts from east of the damn we discovered that there was a significant change between the two sides. The ‘P’ value was .0003408313.  Then we preformed a T test between the aluminum level west of the dam to the aluminum level east of the damn, and discovered that there was no statistically significant difference between the two. The ‘P’ value was .6993175331. This helps to prove our graph (graph two) to be true. There is a significant difference between earthworms, but not aluminum which means they can not correspond to each other.  If they did have an affect on each other then both would have changed, or stayed the same. Proportionally, each value, the average aluminum value, and average worm count, would have changed equally together. Because the earthworms have a statistically significant change, there must be something else causing that change. This also means that there has to be something else making the aluminum levels as high as they are.

        Graph Two is a graph of the aluminum levels, and worm counts of every plot we dug in all four trials. The red line is the trend line. The trend line is showing that there is no pattern. As the number of worms increases, the aluminum level stays the same. To make sure that this graph is valid, we created a residual plot (Graph 1).

          Graph One is a residual graph of Graph Two. Because in the residual graph the data is evenly distributed it is the statistical proof, that Graph Two is valid.

            From this data, we can conclude that there is no correlation between earthworms and aluminum in the soil.