Data Analysis NOT going well

After shopping with Anne this morning for food (I hope we got enough for everything), I had to run some errands and go into town. When I got back, after dinner I started doing the data analyses for some files that I had gotten from the hard drive that Val brought for me this morning. In the process I came to the unfortunate realization that I had been using a bad background file to analyze almost all of my “best” files, so I ran to Fernald to run the file through the Beam Reach Analyzer again to redo everything. But the one computer with the software on it wasn’t working, even though I did a couple of forced shut-downs. Nothing doing.

Perturbed but still determined, I decided to try to analyze the few files that I DID have good background files for. Or so I thought. For three samples, things look pretty decent, though I’m still worried about the source levels being too low. I’m wondering if something went wrong with the analysis we did this week of the calibration files, because the sensitivity seems off. So, that was with the good background file.

Now I thought I had TWO good background files given that I had just made both earlier today (part of the errands earlier) but when I tried plugging the second one in to the boat recording files to calculate source levels, it made no sense at all. I thought it was a background file because it’s before all my other files, but it’s way too high to be background, so I’m going to have to try another file tomorrow…hopefully the computer WORKS then…There were a LOT of boats around on September 15. Will all of my “background” files be like this? Am I going to have to throw away over 10 of my recording samples? Are all of the rest of my samples going to be like this if I keep using the array? I really need to try using the blue box, maybe because it was the first hydrophone we worked with but I feel a bit safer with it.

That is part of the process of data analysis I suppose, but that doesn’t make me feel much better. On another unhappy note, it is supposed to be cool and rainy most of this week. I hope…that the computer works tomorrow, and I find a good file, and my data makes sense, and that the cold won’t mess me up like it did the first week…I just want everything to work out.

1 Comment

  1. alexandra071

    September 30th, 2007 at 21:27

    For anyone who may have wondered, I ultimately resolved my data issues the next day when the computer worked and I got my analyses straight. I already mentioned this to Leslie, but just in case anyone else was wondering 🙂

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