Racerocks sea surface temperature

Gary Fletcher of Pearson college has linked to a database of sea surface temperatures since 1921

Possible activities:

1.

1. a. copy the data into excel.
   

2. b. Have students determine the mean sea surface temperature for each year
   

3. c. have students construct a scatter plot with a trend line of mean annual sea surface temp. vs. year using excel.
   

4. d. have the students add in an r-squared value (a statistic taught in math studies)
   

5. e. discuss whether this provides evidence of global warming
   

6. f. note that this would count as a spreadsheet,  a graphing programme and a database.
   

2. 2.
   

1. a.  have students construct a scatter plot,  with a trend line and r-squared value for a specific month.  divide the students up so that every month is covered.  
   

2. b. have students compare the  trends for  specific months.  Have students form hypotheses about differences between months,  for example,  the differences are not significant.
   

3. 3.
   

1. a.  In the following graphic obtained from wikipedia,  the 1995-2004 mean temperature is compared to the the 1940-1980 mean temperature.  Something similar could be done with this data.
   

2. b. Paste the racerocks data into excel.
   

3. c. determine the mean for each year.
   

4. d. determine the Mean for all years combined.
   

5. e.Determine the difference between the mean for a certain year and the mean for all the years.
   

6. f.Is there a pattern?  Is there a trend in recent years for the mean to be higher than the overall mean?
   

7. g.