Question

What are the Independent and Dependent variables in the following statement?

If the amount of sugar added to water is increased, then the amount of hummingbirds attracted to the water will increase.

Answer 1

The independent variable is the amount of sugar, and the dependent is the amount of hummingbirds

Explanation:

There are multiple ways that can be used to find what the variables are in different situations. I generally visualize a bar graph, and choose which one is best on the x axis and which one is best on the y axis. I don't know if all schools teach this, but in my district, we use DRY and MIX. Dry is dependent, responding, y-axis, and mix is manipulated,independent x-axis. By seeing which one is on the x and y, you choose either mix or dry, respectively, and by thinking of the abbreviation, you can see which is independent and which is dependent.

You can also use a statement: blank depends on blank, and fill it in. In your case, you'd fill it with the number of hummingbirds depends on the amount of sugar or the amount of sugar depends on the number of hummingbirds. Using this, you can tell that only the first one makes sense, so # of hummingbirds depends on the amount of sugar.The first filled-in blank in the statement is dependent, and the second is independent