{"id":669,"date":"2014-05-13T01:46:48","date_gmt":"2014-05-13T01:46:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/digitalhumanities\/?p=669"},"modified":"2014-05-13T01:48:15","modified_gmt":"2014-05-13T01:48:15","slug":"mining-data-gold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/digitalhumanities\/2014\/05\/13\/mining-data-gold\/","title":{"rendered":"Mining Data Gold"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"GISPresentation_20140506_4148_700w\"<\/a><\/p>\n

STUDENTS WRANGLE BIG DATA DURING ANNUAL SYMPOSIUM<\/h2>\n

 <\/p>\n

by MaryAlice Bitts-Jackson<\/em><\/p>\n

There\u2019s a\u00a0superabundance of data<\/a>\u00a0out there and growing demand for those who can mine it effectively. On May 6, 16 students showed them how it\u2019s done during the\u00a0GIS<\/a>\u00a0(geographic information system) Exhibition and Poster Session, an annual event showcasing the ways students apply powerful technology to\u00a0recent or ongoing research<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a reasonably complicated computer program to learn, but it\u2019s definitely worth the learning curve,\u201d said Jill Hautaniemi ’14 of the software, which provides a framework to store and analyze geographically based data.<\/p>\n

MAPPING NEAR AND FAR<\/h3>\n

The students, all part of an advanced GIS-applications course, presented data that had been recently gathered in points near and far. A double major in\u00a0environmental science<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0biology<\/a>, Hautaniemi cross-referenced data she\u2019d collected for her senior biology-research project with elevation data sets from a government Web site, and found correlations between elevation levels and the health of hemlock trees in the Carlisle region.<\/p>\n

Jenna LaRiviere \u201914, an\u00a0archaeology<\/a>\u00a0major, married historical and construction data about barns in Pennsylvania with the geological makeup of the ground on which each barn stood. \u201cBy integrating location with foundational materials, we can get insights about the economic, political and practical reasons why they chose these materials, and this tells us something about the people who lived there,\u201d says LaRiviere, who will pursue a master\u2019s in museum studies at the University of East Anglia in the fall. \u201cIt adds a whole new dimension to our understanding of their histories.\u201d<\/p>\n

Environmental science major Jack Bryan \u201914 examined stream-remediation options in nearby Michaux State Forest, using raw data collected by the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources and by students in a conservation seminar. By creating elevation and relief profiles of the watersheds, he was able to identify the areas most in need of cleanup, and he\u2019ll make the project available to stream-monitoring volunteers.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"StudentsPhoto by Carl Socolow ’77.<\/div>\n

\u201cHopefully, they\u2019ll build on this, and as they do, they\u2019ll be able to recognize patterns and use different variables in tandem, combining data they might not think to combine,\u201d Bryan said.<\/p>\n

Taylor Thompson \u201914 presented student-faculty research on the effects of temperature on sex determination in\u00a0painted turtles<\/a>\u00a0born in 2010 at a local pond. She inputted temperatures recorded at 16 turtle sites with the precise locations of each nest, the makeup of the soil on which they rested and the sex of the turtles born there. Nests built on natural soil, which stabilizes slight temperature fluctuations, yielded a roughly even number of male and female turtles, whereas nests built on a soil-gravel mix did not. \u201cBecause the information is displayed spatially, you can\u00a0see<\/em>\u00a0the patterns emerging,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Other locally based projects included Michael D\u2019Aprix \u201914\u2019s geodatabase for Dickinson\u2019s campus, Anna McGinn ’14\u2019s produce-access map of the Carlisle area, Anne Dyroff \u201914\u2019s qualitative map of Carlisle running routes, Mary DiGiorgio \u201914\u2019s analysis of campus trees and Christine Burns \u201914\u2019s study of trees in downtown Harrisburg.<\/p>\n

Projects rooted farther from home included a crime-rate analysis of North Philadelphia (Amanda Vandenburg \u201914), a basin analysis of a state park in Maine (Elizabeth de la Reguera \u201914) and a trail map of Michaux State Forest (Tucker Deady \u201914), while Will Kochtitzky \u201916 and Leslie Milliman \u201914 went global, creating a map of lake vegetation in Bolivia and of weathering on an island in Guadeloupe, respectively.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s amazing how many different applications there are, as you can see in the variety of subjects represented here,\u201d said Thompson, an environmental studies major who plans to apply GIS technology to her analysis of trail connectivity as part of her job with the Doylestown Heritage Conservancy, which begins after her graduation in May.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd we\u2019re just scratching the surface,\u201d added Bryan. \u201cIt\u2019s essential to know how to apply basic skills in new contexts. And this is an incredibly useful and powerful tool.\u201d<\/p>\n

Source:\u00a0http:\/\/www.dickinson.edu\/news\/article\/1080\/mining_data_gold<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

STUDENTS WRANGLE BIG DATA DURING ANNUAL SYMPOSIUM   by MaryAlice Bitts-Jackson There\u2019s a\u00a0superabundance of data\u00a0out there and growing demand for those who can mine it effectively. On May 6, 16 students showed them how it\u2019s done during the\u00a0GIS\u00a0(geographic information system) Exhibition and Poster Session, an annual event showcasing the ways students apply powerful technology to\u00a0recent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[85713,2045],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-class-projects","category-events"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/digitalhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/digitalhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/digitalhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/digitalhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/digitalhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/digitalhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/digitalhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/digitalhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/digitalhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}