March+Mini+Project


 * “If March comes in like a lion, it will go out like a lamb?”**

Is there any truth to this saying??? Weather sayings are as colorful as our imagination. While many sayings are based on careful observations and turn out to be accurate, others are merely rhymes or beliefs of the people who came before us. Those people often believed that bad spirits could affect the weather adversely, so they were cautious as to what they did or did not do in certain situations. Those beliefs often included ideas that there should be a balance in weather and life. So, if a month came in bad (like a lion), it should go out good and calm (like a lamb). (reference)

Follow the steps below to find the answer.


 * Setup**
 * 1) Write a hypothesis about whether you think this statement is true or not.
 * 2) You will be looking at the last week and the first week of the month for one of the sets of years below
 * 3) If your last name is between A-F your have the years 1945-1965
 * 4) If your last name is between G-P you have the years 1965-1985
 * 5) If your last name is between R-Z you have the years 1985-2005
 * 6) In various cities around New York State (you pick)
 * 7) Buffalo, NY
 * 8) Rochester, NY
 * 9) Syracuse, NY
 * 10) Troy, NY
 * 11) Elmira, NY
 * 12) Open Excel, Setup your data table like the one below. Replace  with your years. Notice that I skipped a bunch in the middle so it would fit on the screen




 * Collect Data**
 * 1) Go to Weather Underground, set your city
 * 2) Set the Date to March 1, of your first year
 * 3) Change to the weekly view
 * 4) Put the Mean-Avg Temperature in the Temp line of Excel for the first week
 * 5) Put the Sum Precipitation into the the Precip line of excel for the first week
 * 6) Click next week until you get to the end of the month (it should be the last week that starts with March (it's ok if there is a couple days of April in it)
 * 7) Put the Mean-Mean Temperature in the Temp line of Excel for the last week
 * 8) Put the Sum Precipitation into the the Precip line of excel for the last week
 * 9) Change the date to March 1 of the next year
 * 10) Keep going until you collected all the data
 * 11) Put in the formulas for Mean, Meadian, Mode and Standard Deviation


 * Analysis & WriteUp**
 * 1) Make a file in word that has the following sections
 * 2) Introduction - Paragraph telling me about your hypothesis
 * 3) Method - Paragraph telling me what data you collected
 * 4) Results - Paragraph telling me about the results. Basically take the Stats (Mean, Median, Mode and StDev and turn them into a paragraph.
 * 5) Analysis - A Paragraph telling me how the numbers relate to your hypothsis, whether it was right or wrong.
 * 6) Mean & Median - These will help you see where the midpoint of the data was. If the temperature has a higher mean or median, that means the overall temperature was higher. Mean is more useful for even data, median is better for not evenly spread out data
 * 7) Standard Deviation - In this case, the StDev will tell you how "wild" the weather was, the higher the standard deviation, the more the values were spread out, or the wider range the covered. A lower standard deviation means that the values were clustered together.