Science Tony

By McDonald, T.   |  Date 3 of August 2019 Charities are taking over the high street and all of them have volunteers. What kind of people volunteer and why?  While I have been volunteering, I took note of the people and the reasons why they volunteer. I found four main categories of people in the volunteer sector: academics wishing to gain hands on experience; people wish to give something back to the community; peers who wish to support one another through an experience; people looking to escape loneliness. Academics Gaining Experience I found academics volunteering for one main reason: experience. For instance, the volunteer police force gives people experience to go with their degrees in psychology and criminology. In a different type of volunteer role, students in management gain experience of how an organisation is run through volunteering in shops or charities aimed at supporting people with special needs. Charities have lots of interesting pos...

By T. McDonald | 29/07/19 | Updated 07/10/19 Did you know that nuclear tests can be felt on the Richter scale? This investigation maps the nuclear tests registering 5.5 or greater on the Richter scale from 1969 to 2017. (Click on the markers to find out more about that test). At first it may look as if there are not many tests, but if you zoom in on one of the clusters, you will see many more markers. During the investigation it was discovered that the cause 'explosion' was actually four more nuclear explosions. Twelve test sites were discovered with six consisting of many tests, and six with less than ten occurrences. North Korea with just one test was the last nuclear explosion detected in the dataset. The average magnitude showed no real difference with nuclear a explosion was 5.86 and earthquakes at 5.87.  Furthermore, the biggest nuclear explosion was in 1973 and took place at Novaya Zemlya, Russia.  Further investigation revealed little difference betwee...

By T. McDonald | 2/07/19 You may have heard of API’s and wondered what you can do with them. This is a simple but satisfying use of this powerful technology. What is API? Application programming interface. What does it do? An API will allow communication between two applications. The API I am using is a publicly available web-based API , which returns data as in JSON or XML.  In other words, I send a message to a stated website and request some data, in this case images are then returned to me.  Using python 2 is a little different in the coding.  It is worth noting that the ['file'] at the end of json.loads() may be different in the website you are connecting to.  I connected to randomcat.com .    Hope you enjoyed this quick blog.  Please leave a comment below. 

By T. McDonald | 2/07/19 The data pipeline is one way of handling data. This involves acquiring data from a source, or sources, preparing it for use, analysing it, and presenting what was discovered during the analysing to an appropriate audience. Subsequently, there are four stages to the pipeline, which I will outline in this blog: Acquisition Preparation Analyse Presentation Acquisition Before you can do anything, you will need to find some data and determine if it is suitable for the task. This involves legal issues surrounding the data such as its licensing: are you allowed to use it and if so, what are you allowed to do? There may be limitations on the use of the dataset for example. Furthermore, files come in different formats such as CSV or JSON for example. exampleFile.csv Or exampleFile.json   Meaning of the extensions: CSV = Coma Separated Values JSON = JavaScript Object Notation The above are just two examples and there will be other ty...

By McDonald, T . | Date 14th of June 2019 We live in a world that is obsessed with data. Companies collect data on all types of people and things. You may have even heard the term big data or heard people talking about data, but actually is data?  Data is neither information not knowledge, so what is it? Data is not information. Information is according to Lexico.com, ‘ What is conveyed or represented by a particular arrangement or sequence of things .’ In other words, information is the arrangement of data into something meaningful. Information is usually generated in order to answer a question from raw data. Information is not data, but information does have data in it. Data is not knowledge either. Knowledge is some information that a person can use in conjunction with other information in a stack of knowledge. Lexico.com defines knowledge as, ‘ Facts, information, and skills acquired through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understandi...

  By McDonald, T . | Date 15th of December 2018 As a coder, sitting at a desk all day solving problems is fun and exciting. However, the lack of exercise can take its toll on our health. As a result, many coders exercise after work or on days off, but it is not enough to keep in good condition. For this reason, a little extra is required. This surprising tasty dish is low in fat and is a great meat free option that is best if the mushrooms are kept in big chunks. This casserole is not only a healthier option it also reduces the suffering in the world by not contributing to the slaughter of animals. So, if you are game for a veggie option give this delicious recipe a try. This dish is suitable for vegans if the butter is swapped out for a vegan alternative or it can be dropped altogether and replaced with olive oil. Preparation time: Casserole 2 ½ hours including preparation and cooking time Mash ½ hour Serves: I have given the measurements for one person, so...