Analytics

GPS Tracking

I recently downloaded an app on my Android phone that logs GPS coordinates as I’m traveling. I was a bit unsure how well it would work, but a few test drives proved that it’s quite capable, at least in areas where cell phone coverage is good. I live in the Phoenix, Arizona area, and go hiking in South Mountain Park quite often. Since the park is just south of the metro area, and one of the mountains is peppered with cell phone towers, coverage is very good there. So I gave the phone a try, tracking my progress around a two and a half mile hike over relatively easy terrain. I then exported the data from the web-site where it is stored, converted it to KML format so that Google Earth could read it in, and plotted my path. The screenshot below shows the track I took, the elevation that…

Analytics

Kepler-22b

With the new Kepler telescope findings having hit the news-feeds this month, I thought I would post an update to my original data. The tally of Kepler planetary candidates now stands at 2,326, with one particularly noteworthy find: Kepler-22b. Also known as Kepler Object of Interest (KOI) 87.01, or Kepler Input Catalog ID 10593626, this planet deserves special attention, as it is one of the first confirmed planets that resides within the habitable zone of its star. At only 2.4 times Earth’s diameter, and with an orbital period of around 290 days, it seems to be a pretty close match to the Earth. The Kepler web-site has a nice article describing the planet, with the image below showing how it stacks up against the inner planets in our own solar system. NASA Mission Page – Kepler (image credit: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech) After reading about the new planet, and trying to find the raw…

Analytics

Earthquake Analytics

I’ve been experimenting with various ways to present data in this blog, mainly using static screen shots of graphs. But over the weekend, I started exploring interactive options. In particular, there is a very capable tool out there called Tableau that provides a way to publish analytic graphics to the web, using their publicly available server to process the data. It has quite a lot of flexibility. The analyses below are my first foray into this endeavor. I also updated my earlier post on the Kepler telescope results to make it more interactive as well. All data is from the U.S. Geological Survey earthquake database. This first visualization shows the world-wide distribution of earthquakes from January 1, 1973 to October 14, 2011 from magnitude 4.9 to the maximum recorded of 9.1. The tectonic plate boundaries are easily visible. You can change the magnitude and year sliders to limit the data…