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Problems with spreadsheets

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By McDonald, T.   |  Updated 24th of March 2020 Small errors in spreadsheets have been the cause of major problems in real life. Examining the kinds of common errors in spreadsheets helps us understand the general problems working with data can present. In order to understand these problems, it is a good idea to look at what a spreadsheet is and how equations can go wrong. Spreadsheet ideas   A spreadsheet consists of one or more sheets: A sheet is a two-dimensional (array) of cells in which each cell is referenced by an index consisting of its column letter and row number. A cell can contain data or a calculation (known as a formula). There is a text box, known as a formula bar, in which the contents of a cell are displayed, and which is used for creating and editing the contents of the cell. What is a spreadsheet?   A sheet can contain one or more: Tables (sheets) A table is a two-dimensional array of data; some data is numeric, some is text. The tabl

Why People Volunteer

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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 positions; subseq

Nuclear Test Map For 1969 to 2017

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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 between

Random Images from API with python

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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. 

An Outline Of The Data Pipeline

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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 types.

What is data?

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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 understanding o