Data are available on annual rainfall over 50 years at different
locations across the Pennines. Students are invited to investigate the
differences in the characteristics of daily rainfall in relation to
altitude and longitude. This involves considering the accuracy of the
data and handling different units of measurement. The raw data are
simplified and presented graphically as histograms or stem and leaf
plots. Animation is used to illustrate the construction of these,
including the 'drag and drop' options for the student. Measures of
location and dispersion are used to compare rainfall over the different
sites.
A set of survey data on migration within the United Kingdom is provided.
Students are invited to investigate the movement of people in South
Yorkshire with what is known about migration in the UK as a whole in
the past year. They investigate the compatibility of data for South
and West Yorkshire, both urban areas. They then investigate the
compatibility of movement for these urban areas with the rest of
Yorkshire and Humberside. This provides a comparison for rural and
urban migration. Finally, data on people who have moved in the last
five years are investigated for the same areas, searching for
compatibility between rural and urban migration over this longer
period. Statistical techniques include the distribution of a sample
percentage (or proportion), normal approximations to this distribution,
the distribution of the difference between two independent normal
variates, confidence intervals for a single percentage (proportion) and
the difference between two percentages (proportions).
We have about 18 months of data about daily mean river discharge in a
river in North Wales. We have daily rainfall data for a nearby site
for the same period. Investigate the effect of rainfall on stream
discharge, the implications for hydropower, look at the seasonality of
the stream discharge and use for prediction. The analysis uses cross
correlation at different lags, time series and seasonality, following
some more elementary data investigation.
We have annual (mean) rainfall data for sites falling in a broad band
across the South Pennines to follow up the simple four-site analysis of
the problem module on 'Annual Rainfall'. Students look at the
connection between rainfall and altitude across the region using
regression of data from hundreds of sites; block the sites into regions
to take out the east/west effect and lessen variability. They look for
an east/west effect by standardising by height across the region?
This is a follow-up to problem 1 on 'Annual Rainfall'. A fuller
investigation into rainfall at the four sites is made using means,
medians, quartiles, box plots and standard deviations.
Data are provided from censuses and surveys of bus usage in South
Yorkshire. How did deregulation affect bus usage? Before and after
comparisons can be made to get answers to the question. Data come
from the 1981 and 1991 censuses. The approach is based on hypothesis
testing with an estimation of differences using confidence intervals.
