MacKay Minutes 2016/03/25

We compared and contrasted the MacKay Phenological reports for 1901 and 1917.

The 1917 report is much more "boiler-plated"; in 1901, when MacKay was just getting started, he spent a lot more time explaining what he was up to, and why he was doing what he was doing.

He also laid out how the data should be collected, what care and attention to detail he expected, how to average data, etc. You can see the fastidious nature in MacKay.

We discussed issues of

• missing data,
• whether medians would be better than means.

Andy believes that this may be the first big case of citizen science. It would be worthwhile to try to determine if that is so.

For next time,

• Andy will try to reproduce the figure on page 496 of the 1901 report;
• Madison will contact Miriam's student, to see if she can get the data and an idea of what they would like us to do;
• Laura will try to track down a publication in the Journal of Education, from 1902, with a fuller report on the phenological data of 1901 (she found it!).