Title
A Statistical Analysis of Average Temperatures in July and December in Boise, Idaho
Document Type
Presentation
Publication Date
April 2010
Faculty Sponsor
Dr. Jennifer Pierce
Abstract
This paper uses statistics to analyze Boise-wide average temperatures in the months of July and December to see if global warming is occurring in Boise, Idaho. The Excel tools that I use are histograms, mean, median, quartiles, and standard deviation. Correlation also can determine how dependent a response variable is to an explanatory variable. The correlation between year and average temperature was 0.098 for July and -0.141 for December. This indicates a weak relationship between average temperature and year. The most likely average temperatures for July are ~74.1oF and ~ 33oF for December. Some of our average temperatures might be outliers whcich affect mean, median, and standard deviation. With the outliers omitted, the mean and median values were the same for both months respectively, indicating a symmetric distribution. I also performed an analysis on decadal average temperatures for July and December. The error bars vary based on the spread of the data. Some decades have less error associated with them and some have a high correlation. July average decadal temperatures from 2000 to present appear higher than previous decades, but December’s average decadal temperatures for the same decade appear normal.