Katrina+and+Sarah's+ISP+Chart



==== Analysis: I observed that the fish started to make real progress, and memorize the maze around the fifth day. From that point the beta fish was doing the best for a while, but the gold fish finished on top in the end. The tetra didn't learn the maze as fast as the other fish, but according to the chart it did have an initial inclination to learn the maze at some points. The Beta fish was showing the most signs of progress until about febuary 25 when the gold fish took the lead. The tetra's time was very unpredictable until about Febuary 27, it would start at a time of over a minute and in a few days it would be under 10 seconds then the next day go back up to about 40 seconds. The gold fish's time on the chart shows that the gold fish learned to go through the maze faster every day. It showed a direct path downwards for time until March 5 when it's time slowed to an avarage of 5 seconds every day. There were times when the Tetra did better than the Beta, which surprised me, I thought the Beta would do better than both the fish for the entire trial.====

==== Conclusion: In my hypothesis I though that the Beta would do better than the other fish in all trials. Gold fish are normaly bought to feed other fish, not as the acual pet, do I thought the Gold fish would do the worst in the maze. I was completely wrong, at the end of the trials the gold fish showed the most signs of improvement. The beta did second best in the end but was only a little smarter than the tetra. The tetra was completely unpredictable in the first few weeks of the experiment, but did show signs of improvement from the first trial to the last. In the beggining the Tetra started with a time of 39 seconds, the beta had 30.1 seconds, and the gold fish had 54.6 seconds. In the end the Tetra had a time of 9.8 seconds, the beta had 4.6, and the gold fish had 4.5. Through this experiment I have shown that out of a Beta, Gold, and Tetra fish the Gold fish is the smartest. I have also proven my theory that pet fish can be trained.====

Limitations: In my opinion I would say my experiment was a success, however there are a few things I would have changed if I could do it again. First, I think I should have taught the fish to do more than just go through a maze, I have found several sources stating that fish can swim through a hoop and even play soccor. Second I would have given the fish a bigger, more complicated maze to do, the maze I built was about two and a half feet long and had only three different ways to get to the end. Finally I should have been more sure that the fish were recieving the same amount of food after each round of the maze. If I were to do this experiment again, my new hypothesis would be that the gold fish would show the most improvement and have the lowest time at the end, the beta would be the second best, and the tetra would be third but show a more predictable pattern of times.