Laura Brancati's Work Report - spatial-data-discovery/sdd-2021 GitHub Wiki

Nov. 5th, 2021

Weekly activity log

  • Readings (~20 min)
  • Quiz 9 (~1 hour)

Activity summary

Our class material this week covered NetCDF5 files, what they are, how to write them and how to read them. It is still a bit difficult for me to see how they can be very useful since we haven't applied how they are most useful, right now they mostly just seem to be a complex way to store files. I don't really see myself using these, probably even less than hdf5 files.

Up next

  1. Reading
  2. Discussion 10
  3. Quiz 10

Oct. 30th, 2021

Weekly activity log

  • Discussion 9 (~20 minutes)
  • Readings (~20 min)
  • Quiz 7 and 8 (~1.5 hours)

Activity summary

Our class material this week covered hdf5 files, what they are, how to write them and how to read them. It is still a bit difficult for the to see how they can be very useful since we haven't applied how they are most useful, right now they mostly just seem to be a complex way to store files.

Up next

  1. Reading
  2. Discussion 10
  3. Quiz 9

Oct. 22nd, 2021

Weekly activity log

  • Discussion 8 in class (~30 minutes)
  • Readings (~20 min)

Activity summary

Our class discussion and topic this week was on geospatial fabric and the 5 V's of big data. My group focussed on the solution of the volume problem. We argued for the use of object storage rather than the hierarchical file storage that we are accustomed to.

Up next

  1. Reading
  2. Discussion 9
  3. Quiz 8

Oct. 15th, 2021

Weekly activity log

  • Sparse Data Challenge (~1.5 hours)
  • Quiz 7 (~35 min)

Activity summary

At first I thought my partner and I, Mersaccio, would not be able to complete the challenge since it seemed very complex and beyong anything I had worked on before. We talked it out and step-by-step were able to figure out how to turn the ASCII file into an array and run KNN to fill in the gaps of the file. We did not finish it since it was midterm week but im confident we could have, given more time to do it.

Up next

  1. Reading
  2. Discussion 8

Oct. 8th, 2021

Weekly activity log

  • Intro to GIS reading (~15 min)
  • Discussion 6 (~45 min)
  • quiz 6 (~30 min)

Activity summary

Working with QGis to visualize the ASCII raster file involved a big learning curve. The interface was outdated and clunky, although it can definitely be very powerful and has lots of tools. I hope we can use it in class for further spatial data explorations and more relevant material.

Up next

  1. No class on Wednesday

Oct. 1st, 2021

Weekly activity log

  • ASCII reading (~10 min)
  • sandbox challenge 3 (~10 min)
  • a day in the life model in class; Discussion 5 (~15 min)
  • quiz 5 (~25 min)
  • download QGIS (~10 min)

Activity summary

The ASCII raster is a format I had never worked with before. It is really powerful for showing data spatially wherever you want. Although its downside is that you have to have a tool to read and process the file to be able to display the data.

Up next

  1. Discussion 6
  2. Using QGIS and QGIS reading
  3. Quiz 6

Sept. 24th, 2021

Weekly activity log

  • sandbox challenge 2 (~1 hour)
  • Schwarze reading (~10 min)
  • posted discussion 4 (~10 min)
  • quiz 4 (~20 min)

Activity summary

The sandbox challenge makes us think about spatial data and the ethics behind it. We are attempting to give the user locational information about the image that they input into the algorithm.

Up next

  1. Reading ASCII
  2. Discussion 5
  3. Quiz 5

Sept. 17th, 2021

Weekly activity log

  • created utility script (~1 hour)
  • created and posted podcast (~10 min)
  • updated About Me page to include utility script (~15 min)
  • posted discussion 3 (~10 min)
  • quiz 3 (~20 min)

Activity summary

My utility script stitches together two or more images that have overlapping areas. This is a utility script because it is a short piece of code that can help you do something faster on the computer. It took me a little bit to figure out where everything had to be edited and added and then pushed correctly onto GitHub.

Up next

  1. Reading Schwarze
  2. Discussion 4
  3. Quiz 4

Sept. 10th, 2021

Weekly activity log

  • reading Lowndes et al. (~20 min)
  • posted discussion 2 (~40 min)
  • posted sandbox challenge 1 (~10 min)
  • quiz 2 (~20 min)
  • created About Me page (~10 min)

Activity summary

The reading made the idea of sustainable authorship seem more concrete and applicable. It was a good example of how necessary sustainable authorship is. Working on the 'About Me' page was useful since it helped me feel better about using markdown and posting on GitHub. In terms of the question "What is spatial?" I do not think we have done anything in that field but the idea of spatial data is crucial not just to this class, but also to the fields and research I am interested in exploring. I am excited to work with spatial data.

Up next

  1. utility script
  2. discussion 3

Sept. 5th, 2021

Weekly activity log

  • reading Goldsberry (~15 min)
  • posted on discussion board (~40 min)
  • took the quiz (and did it multiple times) (~20 min)
  • reading Tenen and Wythoff (~25 min)

Activity summary

  • The readings were straightforward and relevant to the topics we are discussing. Im glad we are using GitHub for this course and struggling through it along with my classmates because even though I have used it before for internships, I still find it quite confusing. I am slowly getting the hang of where all of our various work goes (discussions, journals, code files, etc.) since there are so many repositories.

Up next

  1. work on sandbox challenge
  2. reading Lowndes
  3. discussion 2 post