Question

I am doing a biology research project where I collected data on different birds visiting a bird feeder. The data I collected was: 13 sparrows, 10 finches, 7 cardinals, 5 robins, 5 chickadees, and 4 bluejays. I want to pose the question "Is one species more likely to visit the feeder than the others?" or "Does one species visit the feeder more than the others?"

What kind of statistical test would I use to do this?

(ex: chi-square goodness of fit, chi-square test of independance, t-test paired, t-test unpaired, ANOVA, poisson, etc)

Answer 1

The data collected here is of 6 different birds,13 sparrows, 10 finches, 7 cardinals, 5 robins, 5 chickadees, and 4 bluejays. So, there are six groups here, of unequal sample sizes. We want to test if one species visits the feeder more than the others, i.e , we have to test the equality of means for six groups. Hence, a t test would not be valid as there are more than two groups. We use ANOVA for testing the equality of means of more than two groups. Hence, the correct answer is ANOVA.