| Specialisation | Data Analysis and Interpretation |
| Course | Regression Modelling in Practice |
| Education Institution | Wesleyan University |
| Publisher | Coursera |
| Assignment | Writing About Your Data |
Besides the historical fascination on Mars due to its proximity and some similarities with Earth, the collection of facts allows scientists to put together a big jigsaw puzzle.
An announcement made by NASA just recently about evidence of flowing liquid water on the surface of Mars just adds to all that is known and the curiosity, or even need, to find out much more.
With all the talks about Mars, including both Science and Fiction (a Ridley Scott’s movie called The Martian, based on the book with the same name, by Andy Weir was released on early Oct/15), the data set chosen for this assignment is the Mars Craters.
The Mars Craters Study, presents a global database that includes 378,540 Mars craters, with diameter of 1 km or larger, that were created between 4.2 and 3.8 billion years ago during a period of heavy bombardment (i.e. impacts of asteroids, proto-planets, and comets).
As the database itself presents a comprehensive list of the craters on Mars, all the data for each of the craters can be used.
The new database is expected to help planetary scientists better understand erosion on the planet.
There is an animation available on YouTube that shows a red dot for each of the craters identified and available in the database.
The database was produced over four years of manual work of the lead researcher and his team in identifying the craters’ characteristics from images produced by Mars orbiters.
With of better understanding on the size and distribution of Martian impact craters also has implications for future, manned missions to the planet.
As the initial data set has only nine variables, they could all the relevant to formulate hypothesis and help in leading to a conclusion.
The variables describe the location (latitude and longitude) or the craters, their basic physical characteristics (diameter, depth, layers) and morphology description (shape, layers and texture).
It is possible to ask, and try to answer, many questions using this data set, like: Are craters of a particular type more prominent in a particular location or region on Mars?
As the latitude and longitude are present, it is possible to create Hemisphere or Quadrangles variables.
The data set was made available by Wesleyan University/Coursera as part of the Data Analysis and Interpretation Specialisation, from the Ph.D. Thesis Planetary Surface Properties, Cratering Physics, and the Volcanic History of Mars from a New Global Martian Crater Database (2011) by Robbins, S.J., University of Colorado at Boulder.