Since day one I’ve had all the numbers I’ll be using for the summer, and my mentor has allowed me to have my project as open-ended in approach as I want it to be. With this mass of data in conjunction with using a program I’ve never used before in a program language I’ve only taken free classes on in the past, it’s easy to say that I started off both overwhelmed and unsure of what my plan of attack would be.
In the last few days, however, I’ve noticed a pattern in how I approach my data throughout the week. I’m basically playing with a handful of variables from date and forecast hours to elevation paired with altitude all in correlation to measured forecast inaccuracies. At first one would think that only five variables isn’t a lot to spend a whole summer on calculating with, but once you start crunching numbers and discovering the tools and potential of your software, those five variables produce twenty-five different results – all of which can be expanded on. Of course, all these data can be presented in a number of unique ways from a simple chart to a three-dimensional topographical surface.
Playing with this much data makes days at work interesting. When I’m playing with a new set of variables, I’m not quite sure what I’m going to do with them at the start of the day. As that day progresses, however, I find myself asking weird questions and focusing on certain aspects of those variables. Since my goal with this program is to ask questions that haven’t been answered before, I find it healthy to go on these statistical tangents to produce unique, and more importantly, relevant, results that can provide interesting insight to the correlations in my precipitation analysis. After a good day of calculations, I’ll find myself with a few homemade graphs that I can’t help but display in my little cubicle and take pride in.
-Jason
Would love to see some graphs – share with us!! Many of you have had to delve into programming and such. It’s a whole new enterprise and it looks like you are really delving into it.