Basic HTML Version
Q
uantitative
R
easoning &
P
roblem
S
olving
216
© 2014 Pacific Crest
W
hat Do You Already Know?
Tapping into your existing knowledge
1. How often do you use data generated by others and when does it tend to happen?
2. How do you determine when and to what degree you should trust the way that others use data?
3. In what situations should you be skeptical about the available data to you?
4. What are five situations where poor-quality data could lead to life-threatening consequences?
5. What are 10 different examples of units? How do you determine the units in data that you are given?
6. Have you ever cleaned data? If so, have you developed any techniques to automate the process of
cleaning data?
M
athematical Language
Terms and notation
data cleaning
—
identifying incomplete, incorrect, inaccurate, and irrelevant data and then replacing,
modifying, or deleting that data (note that this does not include data which might be inconvenient
for your purposes)
data warehouse
—
an integrated data set constructed from one or more disparate sources to create
a central repository of data that is useful in producing trend analysis or comparisons on a quarterly
or annual basis
I
nformation
What you need to know
R
eadings
M
ethodology
P
reparing
O
btained
D
ata
Scenario:
Carbon dioxide is the greenhouse gas considered to be most responsible for global
warming. How have levels changed in the last 800,000 years? What about in the
lifetime of my parents (approximately 50 years)? What does the data show? (I’ve
heard so much about “climate change” and “global warming” that I decided to try
looking at the data for myself.)
Links to data sources are available online at companion website.
Step
Explanation
1. Locate sources for possible
data sets
Find the organizations who are stakeholders in the area of interest
WATCH IT WORK!
Source 1
USA Today
Story: Carbon dioxide in atmosphere at record level (May 2, 2014)
Source 2
Earth Systems Research Laboratory (
ESRL
) Global Monitoring Division (National
Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration): Trends in Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide
Source 3
Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (
CDIAC
), World Data Center for
Paleoclimatology (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration): 800,000-year
Ice-Core Records of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide (CO
2
)