Research and Project Management Skills

This course is a catch-all for various skills which you will need as a working scientist. Most of it is shared with the course RDPM (Research design and project management) which is part of the M.SC in GIS. The part which is not shared is an introduction to programming in R, which is taught in weeks 1, 3 and 5 of the first semester. This part of the course is worth 30% of the total mark.

• The Course Spec
• The R Programming notes, as a PDF. Note that this is one file for all three lectures. If you have not yet had the last lecture, it may not be complete.
• The programming notes as web pages.
• For more info on R, or to download it, visit the R web site

If you are trying to do the examples and you are at home, accessing this over the web, you may want to download the example modtran output file pldat.dat

The data files for the homework questions week1data.txt, randomdata1.txt and latlong.datmay be of use to you.

The image file for question 3 in the last set of questions is available in several formats:

• PNG format Smaller download, but you need the imageio package to read it into R
• PGM format Bigger download, but you do not need the imageio package to read it into R
• Gzipped PGM format As above, but compressed. You'll need to un-compress it before reading it into R.

To read in the PGM file you will need to do this:
library(pixmap)
mypic <- read.pnm("../rpms/light2.pgm")
To read the PNG file into R on your own computer you will need the imageio package installed. Look over here for instructions.

The bulk of the course mark comes from a project proposal to be handed in in early March. Here is a guide to writing this proposal.

The list of projects for 2007-8 is here.

The database of projects for 2008-9 is now available.

I have written some notes on obtaining and using data from MLS, OMI, CERES and MODIS which you can find here