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)

degCdegCdays mmhours 1957jan jan jan jan jan jan jan year month tmaxtmin air frost rainsun 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

total sunshine hours hours median = median = 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 degrees north. Calgary in Canada has a similar longitude. this comparison may illustrate the benefits of the Gulf Stream!