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4 Continuous and Discontinuous

1. Discontinuous variation refers to characteristics that can only take on certain fixed values, such as gender, blood type, or eye color. Continuous variation refers to characteristics that can vary gradually over a range of values, such as height, weight, or arm span. 2. Discontinuous variation is plotted on a bar chart, while continuous variation is plotted on a histogram with a line added to show the shape of the distribution.

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41 views10 pages

4 Continuous and Discontinuous

1. Discontinuous variation refers to characteristics that can only take on certain fixed values, such as gender, blood type, or eye color. Continuous variation refers to characteristics that can vary gradually over a range of values, such as height, weight, or arm span. 2. Discontinuous variation is plotted on a bar chart, while continuous variation is plotted on a histogram with a line added to show the shape of the distribution.

Uploaded by

Ahmed Shousha
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Year 8 Science

Unit 3 Adaptation and Inheritance

3.4 Continuous and Discontinuous

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3.4 Continuous and Discontinuous
O B J E C T I V E S

1. describe the difference between continuous and discontinuous variation


2. represent variation within a species using graphs.
L E A R N I N G

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If you look around your classroom at the other students, you will see that some
students share the same eye colour but very few are exactly the same height.

This is because there are different types of variation.

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What is discontinuous variation?
Characteristics that can only result in certain values show discontinuous variation.

For example, gender shows discontinuous variation. There are only two possible
values: you are either male or female.

Other characteristics that show discontinuous variation are your blood group and
eye colour.

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What is continuous variation?
A characteristic that can take any value within a range is said to show continuous variation.

For example, the height of the population ranges from the shortest person in the world to the tallest
person. Everyone else's height can be any value in between.
This is an example of continuous variation.

Other characteristics that show continuous variation are your body mass, hair length, and arm
span.

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Patterns of variation
To study variation, scientists take measurements of different
characteristics within the species.

To come up with conclusions, they need to collect measurements from


large numbers of the
population.

This data is then plotted on a graph so that


patterns in the data can be easily spotted.

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Plotting discontinuous variation
Characteristics that show discontinuous variation
should be plotted on a bar chart.

For example, a person can onlv have one of four blood


aroups – A B. AB. or O. These are the only values that
a blood group can be, so you should plot a graph with
four bars.

Characteristics that occur only as result of


inherited variation normally show discontinuous
variation.

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Plotting continuous variation
Characteristics that show continuous variation should be plotted on a histogram. A line is then often added
to the chart to make it easier to see the shape of the graph.
Within a population, characteristics that show continuous variation will display a range of measurements
from one extreme to another.

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This type of variation usually produces a curve, which is known as a normal distribution.
Characteristics that occur as a result of both environmental and inherited variation usually
show continuous variation.

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Summary Questions
1. State what is meant by discontinuous variation.
2. State what is meant by continuous variation.
3. State the type of graph that should be used to plot discontinuous data.
4. State the type of graph that should be used to plot continuous data

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