Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2003 20:37:44 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Norm Saunders Subject: Re: tally rally possibilities In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Bill Ellis writes: > I think that Norm's data imported into a spreadsheet program=20 like > Excel could give a real-time bar graph of yearly totals.=20 That > seems easy to me, compared to scraping together the=20 money for a > projection device for a computer, to show it on=20 the wall (ca. > $3000?). The problem is that one Christmas Count Circle doesn't really tell you much, even over a span of many years. It's not until you begin to think of different approaches to combining Christmas Count data for an area of the country or for an ecological region that trends perhaps begin to become meaningful. The danger with any set of data is that statistical "truths" are drawn from it without reasonable substantiation. So beware of time trends projected on the wall (or on paper, either)! Best, Norm =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D Norm Saunders Colesville & West Ocean City, MD marshhawk@att.net=20 =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D =========================================================================