bears: bears
In Bolstad: Functions for Elementary Bayesian Inference

Description Format Details Source References Examples

Body measurements for 143 wild bears.

A data frame with 143 observations on the following 12 variables.

ID. Indentification number
Age. Bear's age, in months. Note, wild bears are always born in January, so an expert can estimate the bear's age without directly asking it how old it is.
Month. Month when the measurement was made. 1 = Jan., 12 = Dec. Since bears hibernate in the winter, their body shape probably depends on the season.
Sex. 1 = male 2 = female
Head.L. Length of the head, in inches
Head.W. Width of the head, in inches
Neck.G. Girth (distance around) the neck, in inches
Length. Body length, in inches
Chest.G. Girth (distance around) the chest, in inches
Weight. Weight of the bear, in pounds
Obs.No. Observation number for this bear. For example, the bear with ID = 41 (Bertha) was measured on four occasions, in the months coded 7, 8, 11, and 5. The value of Obs.No goes from 1 to 4 for these observations.
Name. The names of the bears given to them by the researchers

Wild bears were anesthetized, and their bodies were measured and weighed. One goal of the study was to make a table (or perhaps a set of tables) for hunters, so they could estimate the weight of a bear based on other measurements. This would be used because in the forest it is easier to measure the length of a bear, for example, than it is to weigh it.

This data is in the example data set Bears.MTW distributed with Minitab

This data set was supplied by Gary Alt. Entertaining references are in Reader's Digest April, 1979, and Sports Afield September, 1981.