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QUANTITATIVE EXERCISES
Part of being an effective environmental scientist or scholar, whether you are working in the academic, private, government, or NGO sector, is being able to evaluate quantitative information used in environmental work, and also being able compile, analyze, and present your own quantitative information . These quantitative exercises are designed to help you develop the requisite quantitative skills.
You are required to do three of the following four simple quantitative exercises:
Points for doing effective quantitative exercises:
- Each quantitative exercise should be no more than 3 pages in length. I will not read page 4.
- References can be in any standard footnote, endnote, or embedded reference format. If you use endnotes or embedded references, the notes or bibliography may appear on page 4.
- Each exercise should consist of the use of data, calculations, and statistics of your own choosing to illustrate a point about the environmental problem posed.
- Exercises will be graded on reliability of the data used; appropriateness of specific data, calculations, and statistics to the problem posed; accuracy of calculations, and persuasiveness of arguments made on the basis of the calculations.
- Remember: Figures are human creations. How your calculations come out depends not only on the accuracy and completeness of your data and on how well you do your calculations, but also on how you frame the question and how you interpret the data and the calculations. For this reason, some of your exercises include the requirement to reflect on your own biases in selecting your particular data and in doing the calculations the way you did.
Processes and grading:
- All the quantitative exercises are due at the beginning of a class. You should print out your exercise and bring it to class that day; we will spend the first 25-30 minutes of the class going over the exercise. You should also turn it in electronically to the instructor before the beginning of class. If you have drawings, etc., you can scan and send as a .jpg or, better yet, if you have the capability to do that, as a .pdf.
- I will grade and return exercises, with comments, within one week of the due date.
- A is 4.0, A- is 3.7, B+ is 3.3, B is 3.0, etc.
- Late exercises will be graded down one letter-scale point (A to A-, B- to C+) at 1:30 p.m. on the due date, and one more letter-scale point for each additional calendar day they are late.
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