How to explain there was no way to predict something in my lab?

Question

For College Physics (though can be applied to any lab).
The purpose of the lab was to find the direct distance from a start and end point of a vectored path using trigonometry. Basically the lab has no predictions that I can think of. It's not a "if I do this, then these are the effects" type of lab. I literally just counted my paces in 8 different directions, found the change in x and y, then found the hypotenuse of those distances to find my direct distance from points A and B.

So, what can I say about predictions? If there are none, how do I say that in an educated way?

Morningfox · Answer

Instead of physically taking all those paces, could you have figured out the distance just on paper? Then that would be the prediction.
"If I count my paces in these directions, then the effect will be that my direct distance will be ___ "

neb · Answer

What you should be getting out of it is how the directed distance changes based on the number of points chosen and and location of points chosen. So instead of 8, chose 12 and 4 points. You will find that the directed distance calculated varies since using a finite number of points results in an approximation of distance. It becomes exact only in the limit where the number of points approaches infinity.

Should note also you will generally get a more accurate answer by stepping off directions tangent to the path,

lunchtime_browser · Answer

I think that I would have sketched a map on graph paper and called one corner "the origin".

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How to explain there was no way to predict something in my lab?

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