Week 2: Tutorials, TDA, and Tons of DataCamp

Week 2 was filled with obstacles and victories. This week Cade and I spent most of our time working through TDA tutorials and the Data Visualization portion of DataCamp, which will help us visualize our data in R.

In working through DataCamp, we were able to learn about proper methods of visualizing data and certain "statistical taboos" to avoid when presenting data to audiences.

At the beginning of the week, we had some problems getting R to run he desired functions on one of the computers. I spent several hours working in RStudio without much success at all. However, by Wednesday most of these issues had been resolved with the help of Dr. Donohoue, and we could continue moving on with the TDA tutorial.

The success of the TDA tutorial was definitely the most exciting part of this week. We were able to play with real Topological Data Analysis coding in R to explore various topological surfaces and charts. Seeing our results generated great enthusiasm in the computer lab, and we were eager to show our tutorial results to anyone who would stop to take a look.

It seems as though our work in R and TDA is starting to yield tangible results! This success was an encouraging sign that we are headed in the right direction.

Although this week required some perseverance with R, it has certainly ended in a most productive and encouraging manner! We can't wait to continue exploring topological surfaces in R and their potential applications to analyzing the NASA ATom atmospheric chemistry data.