RESULTS TIME

Starting to get a following!! Please leave a blog address or web address so I can return the comments. Okay results time, in an earlier post I was talking about the experiment I was conducting in a local cave system, attempting to forecast the weather by underground pressure changes. This is part 2:

So I decided on three different types of data, one set called real time, this was the data down loaded from loggers as is, the second set introduced a 1 day lap within the time data and the third set introduced a 5 hour time lag. With me so far. Okay to work out how significant these results were I used a statistical test called Pearson's correlation co-efficient, so thanks Mr Pearson. Now what this does, it take the two data sets, so in this case, one data set was from Bristol Airport and the other set was from Goughs cave and it compares them, not sure how, but it does. And it provides a number or more a formula which can be graphical represented on a graph, the formula details the slope of the curve. It also gives an R square value, which is the important bit because that shows how close to each other the results are.

For the real time data I got an R squared value of 0.5949, you may remember if you read the last post, that the closer the R squared value is to 1 the better, so that's not bad. I ran the same test on the 1 day lag, so the data had one day removed and got an R squared value of 0.6438, getting better. So I ran the test with a 5 hour lag introduced and the R Square value was 0.8888 which is pretty dam good.

So what this means, is its not possible to forecast the weather by underground pressure changes, which is a shame because that would of been cool. Putting it into easy terms so I can understand it, as pressure rises at Bristol Airport, pressure will also rise at Goughs cave only 5 hours later...hence a 5 hour delay exists. Pretty neat.

So what next, well as of today I have a month to write the experiment up, get it printed and ready for submission, also I have to write an essay called Psychogeography in a Heritage town...which could be interesting and then I have an exam on Paloclimate....don't even go there!! Then the summer starts, and of course there is the small matter of graduating, getting up in front of my peers and collecting my 2:2 we can't all be really, really smart you know.

In a quiet place

I'm in a quiet place regarding work at the moment, just waiting for the next set of date line, so had plenty of time to surf the net looking for geography related stuff...and boy did I find it. I decided to write a list of Geographies, just for fun.

Neogeography
Guerrilla Geography
Psychogeography
Deep topography
Historical Geography
Meteorology
Climatology
Development Geography
Coastal Geography
Cartography
Culture Geography
Gender Geography
Fenismist Geography
Fluvial
Regional Geography
Urban Geography
Geology
Hydrology
Geography of Disease

This is a mixture of both Physical and Human Geography and the list has not ended yet, there is more. I just got to find them. The first three are aspects that I've not come across, stuff they don't teach you at uni. For instance the second one in, a group calling themselves Guerrilla Geographers, there mandate is to force geography done peoples throats, at first this worried me, Geography, when related to your primary bread winner, rather then a passing interest, should not be forced onto people. Its the fear of whats new, but after so more reading I started to see what they were trying to say.

Being a physical Geographer, science has and always will hold the answers for me, but even the most up-tight science head has place for a little bit of slack jaw human rubbish. I've spent the last three years running from Human Geography because in my eyes it can't provide the answers. I was asked the other day what type of Geography I like, or what type of Geographer I was and I think I'm a regional geographer, a friend has spent the last three years not taking sides, he calls it sitting on the Geographical fence, but Regional Geography does just that, it sits on the fence bringing out the best of science and not science, ie Human Geography. The regional paradigm fell apart in the early 80's I think, being replaced with the current definition of Geography as place and space, regional geography is place and space.

Geography is an important and large subject, anything remotely geographical that can not be pigeoned holed into either science or social science is geography.

www.passion4geography.co.uk

I'm in a quiet place so I'm gonna join the mass movement, Geography must be retained. Not shortened to Geog but proudly stated Geography because at the end of the day it makes sense.