R - The Drafting Table

Nomography

Nomography is the art/science (both are involved) of graphical calculators. Using a nomogram, you can quickly solve an equation (but only the one it was designed for) with the aid of nothing more than a straightedge. It's something I've been interested in for quite a while, and finally feel

Professional

Most Probable Number

I wrote an R script for calculating MPN. The Most Probable Number (MPN) method is a long-standing way of calculating the concentration of bacteria in a sample (usually expressed as cells/100 mL). Its distinctive is that it doesn't require a quantitative lab assay; instead, it takes presence/absence results

Graphical Methods

Deffeyes Diagram

This post is intended to complement the previous one with a more theoretical look at dissolving carbon dioxide in water. I wrote a script in R to draw a Deffeyes diagram. This diagram shows the interplay between CO2, pH, and alkalinity. My main reference was the venerable Water Chemistry textbook

R

The Rains of Quinault

One of the highlights of my trip to the West Coast was spending a long weekend in Olympic National Park with a couple of friends. This enormous park (bigger than the state of Rhode Island, apparently) has everything from mountains, to temperate rainforests, to coastline. On the first day, we

R

Introduction to Non-Parametric Statistics

Non-parametric statistics are something that I don't recall learning much about in any classes I took—just picked them up from my advisors and literature I read while I was working on my master's thesis—but they're something I think more people should be aware of. I've been wanting to

R

A Minimalist Map of the US Interstate System

Since I've been travelling in the United States quite a bit recently (for business), I thought it would be useful to learn a bit more about the interstate highway system, specifically how the numbering scheme works. It's actually very well-organized and systematic. I made the map below from what I

Water

Water Quality Profile Along an Entire River

I previously blogged about an expedition to travel the entire length of the Rio Grande, by reporter Colin McDonald. That expedition has now come to an end, having reached its destination: the Gulf of Mexico. Introduction The Disappearing Rio Grande Expedition (DRGE) collected a lot of water quality data along

Water

Calibrating a homemade probe

This post is a continuation of the previous one on making a homemade probe for dissolved solids in water. Here I explain how I calibrated it after I got it working. After printing off a new probe tip, I soldered some speaker wire to pieces of metal with an area

Re-Published

Sim City's Laffer Curve

This post is something I originally wrote for a Facebook note a few years ago, but I'm planning to do more to explore economic concepts in video games. Introduction I dug out an old computer game recenty (i.e. before I originally wrote this note), Sim City 2000. Although it's

R

Chaos Game Sierpinski Triangle

The following figure is a representation of the fractal known as the Sierpinski Triangle. It was drawn using the chaos game technique with 100,000 iterations. The way this technique works is: A random starting point is chosen; The next point is placed half-way between the current point and one