11.5 hours work, one figure completed.

[kareina]

All of today and part of yesterday was spent doing a task that I should have done three years ago. To be fair, I started it three years ago, but was not yet sufficiently conversant with technology at the time to do it properly. The task? Summarize all of the previously published estimates for the temperature and pressure of formation of Tasmanian Metamorphic Rocks. The problem with technology? Back then I hadn't yet discovered Isoplot, a wonderful tool for Excel, which permits one to enter in both the measured (or calculated) number and the error associated with that number, and then make graphs with the push of a button which show the numbers & their errors as ellipses (or, if one prefers, as Xs). Since I didn't have such a tool, I resorted to trying to do the figure "by hand". However, I have been technologically savvy enough for many years now to do my drawing on the computer, rather than with pen and paper, so "by hand" meant setting up a CorelDraw file with grid-lines for various temperatures and pressures which I used to get the sizes of the ellipses the appropriate size to show that this one is 500 degrees C +/- 50 degrees at 6000 bars +/- 1000 bars. This is a reasonably straightforward, if somewhat tedious task, and, three years ago I accomplished it for three of the published papers (8 different results there from) before setting it aside to do "real work" towards calculating my own pressure temperature estimates--summarizing other people's work could wait for "later". Well, it is now "later", and it is necessary to have this information with whcih to compare my results before going on to state the tectonic significance of my work. But now the task was *much* easier. It took me a good nine hours to go through the 94 papers, journal articles, and thesis that have been published on Tasmanian metamorphic rocks that I've got access to, determine that 13 of them have data on pressure/temperature estimates and fill in two different spreadsheets--one showing the 20 P/T estimates from those thirteen papers, and another showing what topic each paper covers (in case I need this information later) and if if had P/T results entered into the other spreadsheet yet. Once that was accomplished it was a very simple matter to colour-code the numbers in the spreadsheet by region and tell Isoplot to make the graph (I love the "symbols based on font-colour" feature.) The figure caption took 154 words just to list the regions, which numbers are from which region, give a very short description of what rock within the region the estimate attaches to, and which paper is the source.

Now I need to write a paragraph or three referencing the figure, and describing how my results compare to these before I can move on to the next task--stating the tectonic implications of my results. The end of the chapter is in sight, I can see it from here, but I sure hope the rest of the things I need to do take fewer hours each to accomplish, or there will be problems finishing by month's end...

Comments

[darttn.livejournal.com]

Keep plugging away - you will get there!
Love you
Mom

[glass-violet.livejournal.com]

Deryni fan fic, as requested: http://community.livejournal.com/deryni_fic/profile

[bethchm.livejournal.com]

9 hours for 94 papers, including plotting and graphing? That's more than 10 papers per hour. Very impressive! Can't imagine that additional tasks will involve quite as many source docs, so hopefully you've already scaled the biggest hurdle. Keep goingg, you can do it!

[kareina.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

The only reason I managed that rate was how many of them were on topics that didn't include the sort of information I was looking for--so the process was: look at abstract, if no P/T data, make a note of what the topic is, set aside, if P/T data, make a note of that, if all numbers needed aren't in abstract, page down to the right spot in the article and then write them down. It is very fortunate that numerals look so very different from letters--make it so easy to find them on a printed page...