Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 03/22/2011 - 15:25

I have been reading several of your journal entries and one that really interested me was the data collection one. Where there was an issue with the data that was collected. How often would errors in data happen? I assume that it would not happen often but with science nothing is perfect. What do you do with this outlier data? Leave it in and state what may have caused this error in data. I take it that the two people that work with that overwhelming amount of data and numbers must love dealing with it. Was is a difficult job to begin with? What kind of training did you need for this type of job? I teach chemistry and when data collected comes out incorrect I explain to students that not all things is science come out the way they are suppose to for lots of reasons like human error, instrument error, equipment error. They are under the impression that there is an exact answer to everything.

Juan Botella

Dear chemistry teacher, thank you for all your questions, they are great. I passed them along to
Mary and Kristin. Mary wrote a very nice response to your questions. It
seems to me her information is of general interest so I will post her
answers as a journal entry for March 24. Please visit the journal for the
answers to your questions.
Thank you very much for sending your questions, and let me know if you need
more information on them.
Juan.