*does the happy data dance*
Aug. 13th, 2007 06:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rebeccmeisterWhat a day, folks.
The morning got off to a nice start with Adventures in Bus-Land: I took'd the bus all the way from my house to the drug store to pick up a few things. The bus ride was a whopping three stops long, but covered a good mile of distance that I couldn't have covered otherwise because it's freaking hot and I'm a freaking invalid. On my way back, I catch'd another wee shuttle to the post office to drop off a few things and get some of those handy two-cent stamps. Certain people will be receiving a certain package shortly--I won't say who because I want it to be a surprise, but it's not who you think it is. On the way back, the shuttle driver was rather chatty--I think things are still slow on that section of the brand-new free shuttle. Then I rested briefly in my cool house and then headed in to school.
The semester starts up next week, which means I'll be teaching (TAing, really) again. Apparently I'm the only experienced TA for the course, which should make things interesting. I decided to teach most of the day on Friday, since Fridays usually end up being wasted with seminars and reading groups.
Then I went back to the lab to play with some data. Today's data were quite thrilling--measurements of the area of leafcutter ant fungus. You see, the ants grow the fungus in little petri dishes lined with plaster, thus:
And I want to know how much fungus is in the little dishes, so I have taken standard-size photos of the dishes and have then hand-traced the area of the fungus using a handy free software program called ImageJ. But, you might ask, is this REALLY a good measure of the quantity of fungus? How will I ever convince you?! Well. Subsequent to the photographs, at the end of the experiment, I removed every last bit of fungus from the nests and weighed it all. And today I have examined the strength of the correlation between the weight (mass) and the area, and found it to be quite strong, statistically speaking. So the pictures are a very nice measure of fungus quantity, thankyouverymuch. It's quite nice to be able to say that. And with that, perhaps it's time to go home and get some rest.
The morning got off to a nice start with Adventures in Bus-Land: I took'd the bus all the way from my house to the drug store to pick up a few things. The bus ride was a whopping three stops long, but covered a good mile of distance that I couldn't have covered otherwise because it's freaking hot and I'm a freaking invalid. On my way back, I catch'd another wee shuttle to the post office to drop off a few things and get some of those handy two-cent stamps. Certain people will be receiving a certain package shortly--I won't say who because I want it to be a surprise, but it's not who you think it is. On the way back, the shuttle driver was rather chatty--I think things are still slow on that section of the brand-new free shuttle. Then I rested briefly in my cool house and then headed in to school.
The semester starts up next week, which means I'll be teaching (TAing, really) again. Apparently I'm the only experienced TA for the course, which should make things interesting. I decided to teach most of the day on Friday, since Fridays usually end up being wasted with seminars and reading groups.
Then I went back to the lab to play with some data. Today's data were quite thrilling--measurements of the area of leafcutter ant fungus. You see, the ants grow the fungus in little petri dishes lined with plaster, thus:
And I want to know how much fungus is in the little dishes, so I have taken standard-size photos of the dishes and have then hand-traced the area of the fungus using a handy free software program called ImageJ. But, you might ask, is this REALLY a good measure of the quantity of fungus? How will I ever convince you?! Well. Subsequent to the photographs, at the end of the experiment, I removed every last bit of fungus from the nests and weighed it all. And today I have examined the strength of the correlation between the weight (mass) and the area, and found it to be quite strong, statistically speaking. So the pictures are a very nice measure of fungus quantity, thankyouverymuch. It's quite nice to be able to say that. And with that, perhaps it's time to go home and get some rest.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-08-14 02:45 am (UTC)Ergot?
no subject
Date: 2007-08-14 03:56 pm (UTC)Glad to hear you're feeling better! But as I'm sure everyone wants to know, does this mean there will be Scrabble? ;)
no subject
Date: 2007-08-14 04:49 pm (UTC)I don't mind ImageJ too much for what I need to do...it's pretty simple (measuring areas). But I can see how it could get infinitely more complex and confusing.