Profile

• Time Zone

  Eastern

  
  
• Gender

  Female

  
  
• Organization

  East Straudsburg University

  
  
• Employment Status

  University / College Faculty

  
  
• Role

  Scientist Mentor: I will mentor teams of students online

  
  
• Research Interests (300 words)

  I study the biodiversity of plants. I ask questions like: Why does this community of plants contain 50 species, instead of 100 species, or just one? I want to understand how different species of plants share a place that they live in together.

  
  
• Which of the following best describes your career stage?

  Postdoctoral Researcher

  
  
• Profile Question 1

  What is best about being a scientist?

  
  
• Answer the question you selected for profile question 1 here (300 words):

  I think my favorite thing about being a scientist is that I get to do so many different things! When I think of a question, I think of the different ways I could design an experiment to answer that question. And then I get to write (and sometimes make art!) to tell people about the answers that I found. There is a lot of opportunity to be creative in science.

  
  
• Profile Question 2

  What is your favorite plant? Why?

  
  
• Answer the question you selected for profile question 2 here (300 words):

  Wow, I think my favorite plant probably changes every day! Some of my favorite plants are the ones that are really common where I live, but that most people don’t notice. For example, wood sorrel is often a weed in people’s lawns or flowerbeds, but you can eat it – it tastes like lemon! I love showing people new things about the plants they see every day.

  
  
• Profile Question 3

  What lessons have you learned in your career about how science works?

  
  
• Answer the question you selected for profile question 3 here (300 words):

  One thing I have learned about working in science is that it really helps to work with other people on projects and to talk to lots of people about your ideas. Talking about science with other people can help you solve problems and give you new ideas!

  
  
• How did you hear about PlantingScience?

  Presentation at a Conference

  
  
• Availability

  I am NOT available, please temporarily remove me from the available mentor list

  
  
• Challenge, ELL, Honors

  Academically Challenged
  ELL - English language learners
  Honors or AP - Advanced Placement

  
  
• Capacity: How many teams at a time are you comfortable working with?

  2

  
  

Recent Posts

Nottingham Nasturtiums Emily Rollinson May 7, 2019

Hey, the bar graph looks really good! Now that you have both that and the line graph, you can see what types of information are easier to see in each type of graph.

I'm glad you had fun with the project! Keep looking at plants when you're…

more

Hey, the bar graph looks really good! Now that you have both that and the line graph, you can see what types of information are easier to see in each type of graph.

I'm glad you had fun with the project! Keep looking at plants when you're outside over the summer, it's the best time of year to see lots of species :)

Nottingham Nasturtiums Emily Rollinson May 2, 2019

Thanks for posting the graph! I see now that you went with plotting height for each day separately. A line graph is a great choice for plotting change over time. 

The first thing you notice right away in the graph is what you'd already…

more

Thanks for posting the graph! I see now that you went with plotting height for each day separately. A line graph is a great choice for plotting change over time. 

The first thing you notice right away in the graph is what you'd already mentioned in an earlier post - the burned ones never grew. For the scarified and control groups, was each plant in the group about the same, or was there a lot of variation among plants within each group? The average in the control group looks a little higher, but were all the plants in that group bigger, or is this higher average coming from one big plant? 

If this generally represents all your plants, it's really interesting - do you have any ideas about why the scarified seeds would be smaller plants? 

 

Nottingham Nasturtiums Emily Rollinson May 2, 2019

Hello! 

 

I think that averaging the plants within each treatment is a good idea - after all, you're hoping to compare the general effect of each treatment, and you used replicate plants for each of those groups. The average will…

more

Hello! 

 

I think that averaging the plants within each treatment is a good idea - after all, you're hoping to compare the general effect of each treatment, and you used replicate plants for each of those groups. The average will be a good representation of the effect of each experimental group.  (There are also ways to show variation within each group - because it's interesting to see whether all the plants in a group were close to the average, or if they were very different from each other - but I think you can just use the average for this graph).

 

For something with distinct categories, I would recommend a bar graph instead of a line graph. A line graph implies that there are possible conditions between the points on your graph - like if you tested using different amounts of water, you might want to "connect the dots" between the averages for each of those groups, because it's possible to have an in-between amount of water (even if you didn't specifically test that one). For your groups, they're more separated categories - there isn't really a clear in-between for burning and soaking and control. In a case like that, connecting the dots with a line graph doesn't add much information, and a bar graph might be clearer. (If you've already made the line graph, I wouldn't worry about changing it - the line graph can still be readable! - but that's my logic for choosing the best kind of graph for different kinds of data).

 

I hope that helps!