During our fourth week of class, I was unfortunately very preoccupied with work from some other classes (as I had an exam last week and another one next week), so I have not yet completed the goal I set last week of locating a dataset on sea level rise data. I made a plan last week to either locate a relevant dataset online, or get in contact with a researcher or professor from one of the local research institutions (SMAST, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, etc), and while I have not yet completed that goal, I am hoping to do so by mid-next week. Despite this minor setback, I was able to attend the class session on Wednesday, during which we discussed some applications of the z-score in analyzing the spread, skewness, and “peak”-ness of given data, as well as how to evaluate such metrics using RStudio.
Third Post – September 23rd
For our third week of classes, I attended the zoom discussion/lecture on Wednesday, Sept 23rd, where we described and discussed the different ideas we had for our data sets, and also went over some information on basic analysis of data (identifying the mean/median, variation between the two, different measurements of spread, etc). For my data set, I settled on some topic related to climate change, likely measurements on sea level rise; during the meeting, we discussed different ways of finding some data related to this cause, with some classmates recommending different websites and Professor Davis planning to contact some researchers at UMassD’s SMAST. During the time since the class last week, I began looking at the textbook and skimmed through some sections of the first couple chapters, however the PDF of notes last week was not uploaded, so I have not yet reviewed it. Over the next week, I am planning on looking through more datasets related to sea level rise and potentially getting in contact with some researchers from SMAST or one of the research institutions in Woods Hole (e.g. WHOI, NOAA, etc), and I am also planning to read more in the textbook and review the PDF’s for this week and/or last week, once they are made available.
Second Post – September 17th
For our second week of classes, I unfortunately was not able to make it to the zoom meeting on Wednesday, Sept 16, so I instead watched the recording of the lecture earlier today (Sept 17). Over the past week, I accomplished the three tasks that I laid out (refreshing myself with RStudio, reviewing the PDF of last week’s notes, and trying to narrow down the topic I would use for a data set), on some level. The first two were completed relatively quickly, since I was able to familiarize myself with some of the basics of RStudio without much trouble, and was also able to follow along the notes without much difficulty. The third task took a bit more time, and I still have not completely narrowed down the topic I would choose; I’m currently leaning towards choosing a data set related to rising marine temperatures (either globally or regionally; not sure which one yet), or changes in fishery stocks in New England. My tasks for the next week are to (1) make a final decision regarding what topic to use for my data set, or at least come close to a final decision, (2) begin to read through at least some of the textbook, just as a resource for when I begin to actually use RStudio for the project, and (3) review the PDF for this week’s notes that Professor Davis said he would send out. I am once again hoping to have all these tasks completed in some capacity by the next class, on September 23.
First Post – Sept 11th *retroactive*
**This is my post following the first full week of classes, which I meant to post at the end of the week on Friday, September 11th, but completely forgot to**
After the zoom meeting on Wednesday Sept 09, I set up a rough schedule for what the next week would look like in terms of workload. I already had RStudio downloaded on my laptop and my desktop PC, and also had the textbook available on both as well, however since it has been quite a long time since I last used RStudio (the last time was the end of the first semester of last year, around December 2019), so I’m planning to spend a short bit of time familiarizing myself with the program, just to refresh my memory a bit. I’ve also begun to think about ideas for what data set I would want to analyze; my initial thoughts are leaning towards something related to either climate change, ecology, and/or marine-related, with some more specific topic ideas being sea level measurements or fishery stocks or ocean acidification. Finally, I am also planning to review some of the notes from the previous zoom meeting; I was a bit late at the beginning of the meeting, so Professor Davis said he would construct a PDF listing some of the information we went over in class, and he would email it out within the next couple days. My plan is to spend the next week refreshing my memory with RStudio, reviewing the PDF from the previous meeting, and trying to narrow down the topic for my data set, with the goal of having all of those complete by the next class meeting on Sept 16.
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