[Babase] Meterological data input format, also measurement precison
Karl O. Pinc
babase@www.eco.princeton.edu
Sat, 09 Apr 2005 18:49:09 +0000
I'm thinking that the units of temperature measurement
and the weather station will not be entered row-by-row
but rather once when the data is uploaded and put
in with the upload program.
This leaves:
date
time
person
rain
mintemp
maxtemp
as the columns that would go in per data collection.
We could possibly leave out person and have that
entered upon upload along with station and temp units.
Whatever would work out more easily from a data entry/
procedural standpoint.
Also, I assume that after several hundered years of
thermometer development that the precision of the
measurement is strictly related to the unit of
measure, because the ticks are of different sizes
depending on the temperature unit of measure,
F vs C. In other words,
we don't need to have an explicit value for measurement
precision because all the thermometers are pretty
much the same.
The point is valid for rain gauges too.
If switching instruments results in
differing precisions perhaps we should
also record the instrument used to perform
the measurement -- so we can enter that once
at data upload time and get the precision
from the instrument's precision.
Dunno. At some point we stop with the complication,
but only at the point of diminishing returns.
Karl <kop@meme.com>
Free Software: "You don't pay back, you pay forward."
-- Robert A. Heinlein