Refer to the Table

question 20

Essay

Refer to the table. In 1879, W.J.Beal began an experiment that he could not hope to finish in his lifetime.He prepared 20 lots of seeds for long-term storage.Each lot consisted of 50 seeds from each of 23 species.He mixed each lot of seeds with sand and placed the mixture in an uncapped bottle, then buried all the bottles in a sandy knoll.At 5- or 10-year intervals over the next century, biologists excavated a bottle and checked the viability of its contents.The table shows the number of germinating seeds (of the original 50) from three of the species in years 50-100 of this ongoing experiment.What factors do you think might influence the differences among the species in long-term seed viability?

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Definitions:

Nativist Approach

A theory suggesting that certain skills or abilities are "native" or hard-wired into the brain at birth.

Representativeness Heuristic

A mental shortcut used in problem-solving and decision-making where the likelihood of an event is estimated based on how closely it resembles the typical case.

Algorithms

Step-by-step procedures or formulas for solving problems or performing tasks, often used in computing for data processing and problem-solving.

Heuristics

Rules of thumb that help us simplify and solve problems.