Chapter 3 Progress Questions

The spatial synoptic classification system can be adjusted on a daily basis by matching changes to designated _____________ days.

"seed"

Descriptive statistics often summarizes a variable by a measure of its _______________ . (3 things)

1.) central tendency 2.) dispersion 3.) shape or relative position

A system combining regional climate datasets with geospatial database access to end users is __________

ACIS

The median value of a variable is found by averaging the smallest and largest values in the set.

False

PRISM maps climate variations with great precision over __________.

complex terrain

The range is a measure of the __________________of the smallest and largest values occurring.

difference

Climate normals are ECV averages calculated from the ________ . (time period)

last three complete decades

In a Gaussian distribution, the _______are at the center position of the distribution.

mean, median, & mode

The frequency distribution named for Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss is important because many climate variables approximate its shape, thereby earning it the name a ____________ distribution.

normal

The square root of the average of squared differences of each value from the mean is a measure of the dispersion of values of the variable and is called the _______________ .

standard deviation

For U.S. precipitation data, NOAA climate normal information provides all of the following EXCEPT __________ .

standard deviations (Includes averages, frequencies of threshold excedance, & percentiles)

The analysis, interpretation, and presentation of large quantities of climatic data is typically handled by _______________ .

statistical analysis

The often used statistic for average is the mean, found by taking the _____________ of all values and dividing by the number of values.

sum

The general tendency of values in a series to increase or decrease over time is the series' __________ .

trend

The Köppen climate classification system is based on types of ______________related to temperatures and precipitation amounts.

vegetation