(F) Discrete and continuous data Flashcards
What is discrete data?
data that is counted and only takes certain values
the units of measurement can’t be split up
What is continuous data?
data that is measured and takes any value within a range
can be shown on a number line
all the points have meaning and are different
What discrete data did we collect?
- likert survey
- questionnaire
- bi-polar survey
- photos/field sketches
What continuous data could you collect?
- water level in a river
- amount of rainfall
- temperature
- amount of snowfall
What did we do for the likert survey?
- 4 statements
- strongly disagree to strongly agree
- asked people
What did we do for the bi-polar survey?
- 5 statements
- -3 to +3
- compared sites
What did we do for the questionnaire?
- 3 questions
- yes/no answers
- some longer statements
What did we do for the photographs and field sketches?
- took photos of the sites
- annotated them
- pencil sketch of the site
- general shape then details
- annotated them
What did we do for the environmental quality survey?
- scored sites from 0-10
- six categories
- higher was better
What did we do for crowdsourcing?
- searched for images of the ‘river ecclesbourne flooding’
- took top 50 images
What did we do for the newspaper articles?
- read articles about flooding
- collected data about the river
What are the advantages and disadvantages of the likert survey?
How can it be improved?
- gather opinions in an organised way
- data can be analysed
- people may not answer honestly
- researcher bias affects who’s asked
- print slips with Qs on for people to fill in
- they don’t have to share opinion in public
What are the advantages and disadvantages of the bi-polar survey?
How can it be improved?
-allows us to compare sites
- isn’t a reliable scale
- some criteria are hard to judge
- use a bigger scale
- use criteria that are easier to judge
What are the advantages and disadvantages of the questionnaire?
How can it be improved?
- allows us to ask our own questions
- can collect individual responses
- not everyone/all groups responded
- not a lot of people to ask
- ask more people
- use stratified sampling
What are the advantages and disadvantages of the photos/field sketches?
How can it be improved?
- remind us of the site
- photos capture more detail than we can draw
- sketch shows important features clearer
- only shows time of year/day
- can’t always be drawn accurately
- can be difficult to interpret
- going back at other times to collect a range of data
- drawing from a photo so that it is easier to see
- collect photos of other conditions
What are the advantages and disadvantages of the environmental quality survey?
How can it be improved?
- total scores let us compare sites against each other
- overall representation of the environment of the sites
- depends on the day
- judged by opinion
- sometimes difficult to judge
- use a wider scoring range
- use more than one survey to gain an average
What are the advantages and disadvantages of crowdsourcing?
How can it be improved?
- gives a wide range of data
- gives past data
- gives data from different conditions
- some images could be altered/unreliable
- images of a different place
- don’t provied accurate dates
- check where they were taken
- use images from reliable sources
- use less images
What are the advantages and disadvantages of the newspaper articles?
How can it be improved?
- data already collected
- easy to access
- don’t know how it was collected
- may be inaccurate/biased
- use multiple articles/sources
- use past articles