Experimental Data Analysis Lab

Lab Goals

The goals of this lab are to explore directly the principles of statistical inference in random processes, particularly the standard deviation of the mean for a set of measurements. These techniques are then applied to a specific problem of multiple time measurements to determine the speed of light (at least the speed of light on the internet).

Lab Manifest

• Working version of python
• Lab Handout
• Computer which will run ping connected to the Oregon network
• Instructions for logging onto shell.uoregon.edu
• Comments on ping
• Rømer's Determination of the Speed of Light

General Instructions

The lab handout, linked above, gives detailed instructions for this lab. It also poses a series of questions which need to be answered in your Jupyter notebook in markdown boxes, along with any tables and figures requested. For this lab, you may also want to keep external notes about the data collection and analysis, but any substantive information should be included in your Jupyter notebook.

There are really two separate main tasks here. The first is to collect the raw time and distance data, while the second is to analyze this data to determine the speed of light. You should probably try to get at least the first task done during the first week, and possibly start into some of the analysis tasks as well. If you leave everything to the last moment, you may not be able to complete this on time.

Code Assignment

In addition to the questions posed in the lab handout, you also need to provide code in your notebook which reads in your ping data files (please submit the text files as well), generates histograms of times after any data cleaning, and prints out the mean value (with uncertainty) for the time to each site as described in section 2.5.2.

You also need provide the code (along with any additional functions and data files you used) which makes your final weighted average as described in Section 2.7.2. Please note that you don't need to produce the final weighted average directly from the raw ping files. If you wish to enter the time and distance values for each site into a Jupyter notebook cell (or even read it from an external text file) that is fine.

Errata

You can either work on this lab on your own, or with a partner. If you work with a partner, you may collect and share the same ping data files, although please indicate who your partner was if you do this. Each student needs to turn in their own notebook and code with an independent analysis of this data.

I would strongly encourage you to not try this from home, but rather log into the shell.uoregon.edu server using the instructions here. This will avoid wireless connection issues, problems with routing of traffic on commercial networks, and more direct Internet2 connections between university servers.