weather data. you are going to use excel to look at some weather data. shawbury, nairn and...
TRANSCRIPT
weather data
You are going to use Excel to look at some weather data.
Shawbury, Nairn and Eastbourne are weather observation sites used by the national Met office.
the data handling cycle
Find averages, spreads etc and
draw graphs
Get enough data collected and sorted out
Have a question (hypothesis) to
explore
Make comparisons and use statistics to support or
cast doubt on your hypothesis
Have another question
(hypothesis) to explore
hypothesis
Have a question (hypothesis) to
explore
something that seems to be true
a question that you will look at in some detail – posed as a statement, which may seem to be correct, need to be modified or be wrong
a starting place, to give your work a focus, that might need to be changed later, to look more deeply into an aspect
examples of hypotheses or aspects to explore:
…… is the wettest month
…… has the most sunshine hours
As you move south …..
…… is drier overall than …...
the average yearly maximum and minimum temperatures are steadily increasing there will be a
strong negative correlation between max temperature and amount of rainfall
…… is the wettest season
…… is wetter than ……
secondary data is provided for you
Get enough data collected and sorted out
Have a question (hypothesis) to
explore
the data is reliable because it is from a national weather station that uses accurate equipment
it will need to be sorted so that you can work out summary statistics (mean etc) and draw graphs
you will need to balance having enough data to be accurate and not having too much (work to do)
degC degC days mm hours
1957 jan 8.6 1.6 11 30.9 43.41958 jan 6.3 -1.0 15 63.3 46.21959 jan 4.2 -3.2 24 93.9 77.21960 jan 6.6 1.1 12 101.3 27.71961 jan 6.2 0.1 16 65.0 26.91962 jan 7.4 0.2 8 66.2 66.91963 jan -0.1 -6.9 30 21.0 73.6
year month tmax tmin air frost rain sun
The data is in a file called ‘weather data’
There are 7 fields; the data is mostly continuous
When you sort make sure you highlight all the cells – so that your data doesn’t get all muddled up
data
…
analysing the data, in several ways
Find averages, spreads etc and
draw graphs
Get enough data collected and sorted out
Have a question (hypothesis) to
explore
mean, median, mode (averages)
range, interquartile range (spread)
comparative bar charts, stem and leaf graphs,
boxplots, scatter graphs, frequency polygons
Average monthly temperature in the UK, 1999 to 2008 inclusive
Average temperature per year in the UK, 1760 to 2010
evaluating and interpreting results
Find averages, spreads etc and
draw graphs
Get enough data collected and sorted out
Have a question (hypothesis) to
explore
Make comparisons and use statistics to support or
cast doubt on your hypothesis
70 90 110 130 150 170 190
total sunshine hours
hours
median = 132.3
median = 124.7
The average (median) was bigger for the first month I looked at
Data was more spread out in the first month (range and IQR)
Both data sets are fairly symmetrical
Overall there were more sunshine hours in the first month than the second – which supports my hypothesis
the data handling cycle
Find averages, spreads etc and
draw graphs
Get enough data collected and sorted out
Have a question (hypothesis) to
explore
Make comparisons and use statistics to support or
cast doubt on your hypothesis
Have another question
(hypothesis) to explore
Extension:
Compare Shawbury weather data with data from somewhere in the World on the same longitude. Shawbury is 52.7756 degrees north. Calgary in Canada has a similar longitude.
this comparison may illustrate the benefits of the Gulf Stream!