I can not get the dates on my x-axis. Any suggestions? It looks to me like the river flow rates increase every time there is a positive amount of precipitation. This makes logical sense because the water from the precipititation gets added to the river causing an increase in flow rate. The flow rates then peak a little after the precipitation then the flow rates decrease down until the next precipitation. It also looks like the flow rates are on average greatest in the spring season, possibly because the melting snows increase the amount of water in the river. If I spent some time doing statistical analysis of the flow rates during the different seasons I could probalby show this effect.

I can envision how I could plan several lessons in my 7th grade math course on graphing data using Excel and then a statistical analysis of the data. I think I would prefer to have the students make some measurements as opposed to grabbing and importing data that exists on the internet. Maybe I could tie the lesson to using formulas and measureing distance and time then calculating rates and statistically analyzing the data and graphing it using the Excel spreadsheet program.