Week 7: 7/20/09 - 7/24/09

This week has been focused solely on finding the clearest graphical interpretation of the data that we have so far. I had to compare the Light scattering data to tides, salinity, nitrate levels, and temperature. Unfortunately, the time stamp of the data sets did not have the same format so I had to manually insert one. Below is one of my super awesome graphs.

This is a comparison of our data to the tide levels in Astoria. I am supposed to be making some key observations about these graphs, but am having a lot of difficulty because the actual data is completely static in some regions. We think that this is happening every ebb tide when the fishermen are releasing all of the fish guts, which then clog up all of the instruments.

I also needed to compare the data to an average of the data. This effort was all in vain however, since we had no controls over the comparison data. If I did average the comparison data, then my time stamp would not necessarily match up and any interpretations would be useless. Also, I had to rewrite the averaging program so that it performed an average of the transpose instead of the actual matrix. Luckily everything eventually worked out. Though there were a couple of hours where I simply could not figure out why my program was averaging columns instead of rows. It turns out that I was calling a function that averages columns. Luckily this was an east fix (even though it did take my mentor and me a while to find it).

My mentor has been pretty busy trying to finish the final amount of code to fully process the data so that I can finally get started on density calculations. I am a bit worried that I will not be able to finish my project by the time that this internship ends. It seems like there is so much to do in the little amount of time that I have left here.

I'm just going to have to assume that somehow everything will get done.

On a lighter note, this weekend was filled with discovering more of Oregon's natural beauty. Vanessa took a couple of the interns on a trip to see some very old petroglyphs. I actually got to see She Who Watches, which was kind of cool. This petroglyph had been mentioned a couple of times in my Furse class, so seeing it in person definitely added to my overall education on Native American issues.
My roommates and I then rented a Yurt for the night in Honeyman, which was AWESOME. There were sand dunes, a lake, gray whales, sea lions, and the biggest sea cave in the world. So below are a bunch of pictures of my weekend.
Enjoy : )

She Who Watches

The Yurt

Fire!

height="94" />Sand Dunes

More Sand!

Way Cool Lake

Sea Cave