Question

You're working as a data analyst for City Hall in a small coastal town that relies heavily on the ocean (think fishing, shipping, tourism, etc.). The tides of course can, and do, affect many of the business operations in your city related to the ocean. Your idea is to analyze barometric pressure data along with tide tables to look for a relationship. You search the National Weather Service's online data portal (Weather.gov) and find data for your town from the pervious on both barometric pressure and tide height (in feet). The data is free for download, but no one at City Hall has ever sownloaded such data in the past. Therefore, you decide to be the one to go out and extract it from Weather.gov. Based on the way this scenario is described, how would you classify the barometric pressure and tide data?

a) primary data
b) secondary data
c) non- experimental data
d) both a and c

Answer 1

The barometric pressure and tide height data from Weather.gov would be classified as both secondary and non-experimental data because it was collected by another organization and not through a controlled experiment conducted by the analyst.

Step-by-step explanation:

The data you are looking to analyze from the National Weather Service's online data portal (Weather.gov)—specifically the barometric pressure and tide height for your coastal town—are examples of secondary data. This is because the data was collected by another organization for its purposes and you are using it for your analysis. It is not data that you have collected firsthand, nor is it a result of an experiment that you designed and conducted. Furthermore, since it does not result from a controlled experiment conducted by you, it can also be considered non-experimental data. Therefore, the correct classification of the data in question would be option (d) both secondary and non-experimental data.