Name of Resource: Statistics of U.S. Historical Climate Network: PC& Mac
Climate Change Theme: Climate Variability
Sponsoring Organization: SERC/ Carleton College
Intended use: Learning Activity
Intended audience: Educators and Learners
URL: http://serc.carleton.edu/introgeo/mathstatmodels/examples/XLstats.html
Average Review Ratings (Poor to Excellent, 1-5 scale):

Description: If students can be effectively guided through the activity, it offers a number of potential avenues for student learning. Engaging with real data, exploring data and missing values, making sense of data and its visual displays. All these processes have potential for authentic student learning at a conceptual level. (KB)

Summary of Reviews

Reviewer: Carrie Morrill
Comments: In this activity students use historical climate data and Excel to examine recent trends in temperature. This also serves as a good introduction to Excel and some basic statistical techniques. Directions on how to use Excel are very detailed and helpful. The activity could benefit from the addition of more "big-picture" questions designed to get students thinking more about their results.
Read entire review: link text (Acrobat (PDF) 60kB Jun21 05)

Reviewer: Kirsten Butcher
Comments: Educators will need to do some legwork to get this activity ready—they need to explore station data near their location and search the data for a set of data that has 80-100 years of observations (this requires the user to explore for missing data). Some of the Excel instructions in the PDF file are a bit confusing and technical—it will take some practice to be sure the educator understands how to interact with the data using Excel.
Read entire review: link text (Acrobat (PDF) 52kB Jun21 05)