Snoqualmie Falls gets around. The impressive image of the cascading water has been regionally famous since cameras were first lugged to its location in the late 1800s.
But Snoqualmie Falls is well known to some people for something not so obvious to visitors: data.
The falls are used as an example of statistical forecasting in a textbook by Peter Guttorp, a University of Washington professor.
The textbook is still used in classrooms across the country.
Cosma Shalizi’s statistics course at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh uses the textbook and, specifically, the falls data.
“I used it in one of my lectures as an example of building and testing a statistical forecasting system,” Shalizi wrote in an e-mail.
He had used the same textbook as a student.
“I could have gone looking for weather records closer to home, but I was already familiar with this example,” he said, “and Prof. Guttorp had already done the work of collecting 40 years of data and putting it online.”
Dan Catchpole: 392-6434, ext. 246, or [email protected].
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