Ideas for EDA, fall '99

To Do:

• go to library and borrow books related to Data Analysis
• look for discharge data from Danube
• look for ozone data sets on the internet
• ask Benno, if a basic data set can be contoured on line.
• how to deal with the broad range in abilities?

Result of questionaire

• 7 students in class
• 5 Env Sci majors, 2 SEAS undergraduates
• 7 students took Algebra
• 6 students had Calculus
• 4 students took Climate, 1 student is currently taking lithosphere
• 1 student took the Earth Semester
• no problem with basic Excel, Word, WWW
• 4 students know FTP
• 2 SEAS students know Matlab, Origin
• 1 student knows FOrtran, C++
• ~3 students know HTML
• BC students do not have storgae space
• all students have access to computers/Internet in their dorm
• all students have access to a printer

Software

• MS Word/PPT/Excel
• Visual Basic
• SPSS statistical package?
• some contouring package?
• use Benno's data harvester? to contour a dataset, e.g. precip in NYS.

Excel

• Formal introduction into excel using the tutorial information
• Formal introduction on how to deal with files
• Bring disks for everybody into class
• Compatibility Mac/Win
• Different file formats for Excel files

Warm-up

• Scientific notation
• Unit conversion
• Graph by hand?
• back-of the envelope calculations (consider a spherical cow)

• graphs
• picture certain situations, graph results, and describe the results
• scatter plot: size of feet / grade in final exam
• pressure and temperature when flying to NY/SF in July
• climb up a mountain, plot T and P vs time
• talk about how to best make a graph
• different types of graphical representations (maps, pie chart, bar diagram, scatter plot, etc).
• statistics
• Excel
• Spss?
• Visual Basic
• Presentation software
• Desk-top publishing
• Include graphs and tables into documents
• How to write a lab report
• How to make a presentation
• Data entry, data quality
• Error analysis
• Unit conversions
• download data from web sites

• Have formal homework sets every two weeks
• Do some kind of test at the beginning? Pre/post

Presentations in class?

• no grades
• possibly in the PM lab, because students have their own, different data
• as homework, send in MS PP file?

Skills

• Set up skills list
• Word problem -> equation
• Graphing
• basic programming

Mayor data sets

• ozone data, Westpoint, use new data obtained more recently including NYC?
• hydrology data set
•     possibly Danube, Vienna, or Colorado River (not natural enough)
• PM NYC data set
• Surface water chemistry data set
• Sediment core data set (PCBs and Cs)
• 3H Danuabe data set
• Exam, testing data set