Population Estimation

Today we worked as biologists to study the population of robins in a forest.  We used beans to represent the robins and cups to represent the forest.  We captured some of the robins and tagged them with markers.  The robins were then released back to their habitat.  We recorded the number of robins captured and the number that were tagged.  We repeated this for multiple trials and recorded the data as the ratio of marked robins to the total number captured.  We used the science skills of observing and recording and the math skills of writing ratios.