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Data Types: Quantitative vs. Qualitative

When you think of data you likely think of the quantitative kind. This is the type of data that your teachers and other professionals will show you daily. Quantitative data is data that can be expressed as precise numbers that are considered correct. These are the kinds of numbers you will find for a distance from place to place, how much of an ingredient to add, or the temperature on a thermometer. This is also the kind of data reported by the government air quality stations across Alberta which you access when using the Alberta AQHI Map tool. This air quality data is collected using extremely expensive stationary sensors and monitoring systems which is why data is only collected at a limited number of locations.

Qualitative data, on the other hand, often does not have values but is instead a relative change. This means while the data is not incorrect it is not exact either. For example, when you walk from one room to another you may feel warmer or colder, but you cannot say by exactly how much. The indication of warmer or colder is qualitative data. The temperature difference between the rooms found using a thermometer would be quantitative data. The PocketLab Air also gives this kind of data even though it has values. The sensors used are much less expensive in order to make it more accessible to everyone however this means the values are not as exact and often different sensors measuring the same environment will give very different readings. The PocketLab Air however has many advantages over the expensive stationary monitoring stations in that it is accessible to everyone, is mobile, and can be used to find the relative air quality throughout your daily life rather than the area average reported by Government monitoring stations.

A good way to determine what the air quality values from your PocketLab Air mean is to take measurements where air quality should be high and where it should be very low. Then you can compare your other readings to this and see what the relative change is to determine whether the air quality is low or high all throughout your daily life.

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