Two terrific tools for analysis, sharing, and collaboration.

“The Jamovi project was founded to develop a free and open statistical platform which is intuitive to use, and can provide the latest developments in statistical methodology.”

Jamovi offers a delightfully usable tool with robust features. The developers have kept this concept in mind: “One of the dominant philosophies in technology design is that the technology needs to “get out of the way,” of the user.” Jamovi offers to accelerate the work of analysis leaving more time for interpretation and confirming insights. For example, an add-in module Flexplot, intelligently selects the best analysis and presentation of univariate and mulitvariate data.

In an earlier post on June 20th, we visually identified a potential relationship between temperature and TVOC. Employing Flexplot, we quickly confirm the strength and characteristics of this relationship.

Further interesting behavior is surfaced by adding RH as a predictor variable. As a best practice, Jamovi defaults to LOESS for scatter-plots. In this example, simple regression would have masked the unusual RH relationship in specific temperature ranges.

Why not implement a cross-organizational Project Management approach for your program to collect, analyze, communicate, share, and collaborate?

“OSF is a free and open source project management tool that supports researchers throughout their entire project lifecycle. As a collaboration tool, OSF helps research teams work on projects privately or make the entire project publicly accessible for broad dissemination.”

Combined with Jamovi, OSF provides a structured approach to analysis and collaboration across institutions. OSF natively opens Jamovi files (and many other types) facilitating a consistent platform for organizing project information and communication. A remarkable combination of two modern open-source solutions that can be widely adopted and embraced to accelerate learning and professional growth. OSF is equally easy-to-use and configurable to individual preferences.

I came across this program at the Harvard School of Public health in a recent Washington Post article on how to safely return students to school. The article follows a SMART outline with a set of critical steps that can be leveraged for interior spaces. The dramatic new challenges of occupying buildings for education, work, entertainment, and more are driving essential best practices for public health and novel ideas for the future.

We spend as much as 90% of our time indoors, the Healthy Buildings program offers a sound model with 9 areas to consider in detail for home, school, and work. A downloadable report expands on each area and offers more information to help evaluate and plan for healthy buildings.

There have been studies in the past considering the impact on poor interior air quality with elevated CO2 levels on cogitative performance. On the Healthy Buildings site you will find a new study recording significant improvements with increased ventilation.

A more comprehensive study can be found in the recently released book, Healthy Buildings, How Indoor Spaces Drive Performance and Productivity.

A visual review of cooling capacity in a three story building during a period of very high heat, and few visitors. Could be information to consider when planning summer afternoon/evening events with many attendees?

Gray = NWS outside temperature, Green = interior temperature, third floor.

Interior RH range from 42% to 61% over this same period.

Correlation & duration are dependent variables, but help identify non-random patterns and characterize response to solar heating.

Using the Sigmoid Function to accurately measure total hours of daylight.

May also be referred to as a Logistic or Activation function. A hyperbolic tangent function is an alternative: tanh(x) = 2sigmoid(2x) - 1.

Definitions of Twilight, NWS

Working on analog signal processing of a sensor’s low-frequency transient output.

With rising Spring-Summer temperatures we see a strong correlation between indoor temperature and TVOC levels in this chart.

The Total Volatile Organic Compound (TVOC) level is a measurement of the sum of all of the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) found in a room. VOCs comprise a broad range of chemicals that easily evaporate into the air at room temperature (have a high vapor pressure at ordinary room temperatures). Many consumer products release VOCs including solvents, paints, adhesives, building materials, and furnishings.

These TVOC levels are not high but suggest a moderate likelihood that specific VOC sources may be present. Further investigation is recommended if complaints of irritation and discomfort are received.

What may be causing the rise in TVOC levels in this space? One possibility is a very large rug located in the 3rd floor ballroom. The room is approximately 20ft x 40ft, and receives afternoon sunlight through windows on the front of the building.

The sensors are located on the third floor of a historic building that is closed due to the pandemic. The building AC is on and set to run for normal operations.

This temperature-TVOC relationship may need to be considered and accounted for when utilizing TVOC levels to characterize other parameters including occupancy density; a baseline is essential. Interestingly, the relationship is equally sensitive as temperature rises and falls rapidly dissipating, no lingering decay.

Temperature in orange, left scale. TVOC in green, right scale.

Please see August 15th post for further analysis.

IOT for Ecology!

Applying IOT concepts to wildlife tracking and leveraging the International Space Station to collect data from transceivers on thousands of animals across the globe with a common database for storage.

New York Times Article, “With an Internet of Animals, Scientists Aim to Track and Save Wildlife”, June 9, 2020

“It’s a new era of discovery,” said Walter Jetz, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Yale, whose center is working with the project. “We will discover new migration paths, habitat requirements, things about species behavior that we didn’t even think about. That discovery will bring about all sorts of new questions.”

“With skin temperature, we can see in the ducks in China whether the next avian influenza is starting,” Dr. Wikelski said.

ICARUS, Global Monitoring with Animals

The video pitch of the Max-Planck Institute for Ornithology, Dept. of Migration, for the 100&Change McArthur foundation challenge.

A low-power, battery, or with solar cellular trespass monitoring solution.

The monofilament tripwire is located at knee-height. Contact with the tripwire will pull the short metal pin out releasing the magnet to fall inside the tube. A solid-state magnetic sensor embedded at the bottom of the tube changes binary state in the presence of sufficient magnetic flux density. This transition triggers a digital interrupt waking the micro-controller from a power-saving sleep-mode and sends an SMS signaling unexpected human presence.

In addition, measurement of temperature, humidity, battery strength, cellular signal strength, and trespass status are transmitted every hour for monitoring and threshold alerts.

Hall-Effect Switch

Well, not recently, but 40 million years ago!

From an article in the New York Times today:

According to the researchers, “The ilium looks like those of a living group of frogs called the helmeted frogs. Helmeted frogs live in Chile in wet woodlands called Nothofagus forests, and their ilia are similar to the Antarctic frog’s ilium. “They’re robust frogs, and this is a robust ilium,” Dr. Wake said.”. “The ilium is probably the most diagnostic part of a frog skeleton,” said David Wake, a herpetologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who was not involved in the research. “A frog paleontologist wants an ilium.”

Scientific Reports full research.

Swedish Museum of Natural History

Reconstruction of an Eocene pond in the Nothofagus forest of the Antarctic Peninsula with Calyptocephalella, sitting on a leaf of Notonuphar antarctica which was described from the same locality12. Artwork by Pollyanna von Knorring, Swedish Museum of Natural History. Photo credits: Simon Pierre Barrette and José Grau de Puerto Montt, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0), and Mats Wedin, Swedish Museum of Natural History.

Kinsa Health manufactures consumer thermometers connected to a phone app that also collects anonymous data on human temperature readings. Their mission: “Our mission is to stop the spread of contagious illness through earlier detection and earlier response.” could not be more timely as the world faces the coronavirus pandemic.

They have created a remarkable “Heath Weather Map” that presents the human temperature data collected across many thousands of thermometers across the country.

Developed by F.J. Anscombe in 1973, Anscombe's Quartet is comprised of four data sets where each produces identical mean, standard deviation, and correlation statistics, yet when viewed in a scatter plot we see each is unique.

When we calculate summary statistics, we can lose some information about the data we’re analyzing. A single number derived from a data set will not capture all the information that is present. Other statistical tests characterize distribution and offer a more complete understanding. For example, skewness is a measure of the asymmetry and does not have the same value for each of these four data sets.

Anscombe’s Quartet is a reminder of why it’s essential to use visualizations when exploring data and how summary statistical information can be misleading if used alone. Visualization provides a unique view that can make it much easier to discover interesting structures vs. using only numerical methods. Visualization also provides the context necessary for more accurate analysis and to make better choices.

Each of Anscombe’s examples illustrates the relationship between the two variables, but only one of them matches the story drawn from the summary statistics. Only data set I appears to be a well-behaved data set with a linear model.

Data sets III & IV demonstrate the effect a single outlier has especially when the sample size is small. Outliers can skew a data set in a way that is hidden in its statistical summary, but readily apparent when the data is visualized. In these two examples, the box charts do a good job of highlighting the presence of an outlier.

The folks at Autodesk Reserach have done great work in the field of visualization. This post has some terrifically informative animated visualizations, and they provide a compelling case for using multiple visualizations to reach a complete understanding.

Federal style footed teapot by Israel Trask at the Cabot House, Historic Beverly.

The Cabot House is a Georgian style mansion built in 1781, the first brick mansion built in Beverly, and a delight to visit!

Working on the transition from prototype to production enclosure for a new dual sensor concept with the addition of a very small daughter board (18mm x 20mm).

A very concise summary

This is a work-in-process with more to come…

Bee Swarm plot of the metric shown by the yellow trace modulated by two other variables(radius-blue and color-red).

An unexpected and intriguing find today, Sonification of data produced by TwoTone.

From their description:

“Data - Turning data into sound has advantages. Just like in the cinema, sound adds another layer to understanding. Sound does not require you to look at a screen. You could be anywhere in a room and hear the differences in the output. It can be used by itself or as a complement to visual systems. The representation of the data is as “true” as a visual rendering and any anomalies can be heard, identified and acted upon. It also has potential uses for people who are visually impaired.”

In this example, I uploaded three days of data from a particulate matter sensor located in a large ballroom, both peak and average values. I then filtered the peak value track by a threshold value of the average track. Two different instruments play at the same tempo but the piano is only heard when the peak values exceed an average value of 160.

Datawrapper & Plotly are fine tools offering rich capabilities to enable a deeper understanding of data.

The top image is a 2D contour plot created in Plotly from a scatter plot showing 48 hours of interior RH vs. exterior Temp data, shown in the middle plot. The raw data shown at the bottom in a simple Excel graph.

The 2D contour map is a remarkable transformation of information presented in the scatter plot. Density is not readily visually apparent in the scatter plot, while the contour plot shows the gradient and concentration approaching 29% RH and 38 degrees.

Just a few reasons to visit:

• Built in 1885, the only remaining free-standing building purpose-built for a GAR in the entire country!

• Has on display the last flag to fly over Richmond before the city fell to Union troops on April 3rd, 1865.

• Located in the center of the grand hall is the capstan that was onboard the USS Kearsarge when she defeated and sank the confederate raider the CSS Alabama off Cherbourg, France on June 19, 1864!

• Very dedicated and knowledgeable volunteers!

I came across this interesting spray coating in a specialty art supply store today.

Remarkably, it can be removed with mineral spirits or isopropyl alcohol.