Clarification for Sea Level Predictor

Python
1

I downloaded the .csv file but Excel can’t seem to parse it correctly and Google Sheets isn’t showing the numbers correctly - it’s showing me 9 digit values under all the non-date columns. Is there some other program that can read the values correctly that I can use?

Also, what units are the measurements in? The challenge wants to make a graph with units in inches, but CSIRO uses millimeters for these, no?

Challenge: Data Analysis with Python Projects - Sea Level Predictor

Link to the challenge:

2

Are you able to open the CSV on replit? It should look like this:

Year,CSIRO Adjusted Sea Level,Lower Error Bound,Upper Error Bound,NOAA Adjusted Sea Level
1880,0,-0.952755905,0.952755905,
1881,0.220472441,-0.732283464,1.173228345,
1882,-0.440944881,-1.346456692,0.464566929,
1883,-0.232283464,-1.129921259,0.66535433,
1884,0.590551181,-0.283464567,1.464566928,
1885,0.531496062,-0.330708661,1.393700786,
1886,0.437007874,-0.381889763,1.255905511,
1887,0.216535433,-0.602362204,1.03543307,
1888,0.299212598,-0.519685039,1.118110235,

Good question about the units. The source is linked at the bottom, and it specifies inches: “Comulative changes (in inches) in sea level for the world’s oceans based on the combination of long-term tide gauge measurements and recent satellite measurements.”
https://datahub.io/core/sea-level-rise#readme

3

Yes, but usually opening these files on Sheets makes it easier to understand what I’m seeing cause the columns are actually ordered.

4

I get that. It can be useful to understand the data through pandas methods .info(), .describe() and .head() though. You can imagine dealing with data that’s millions of rows this way and understanding min and max values, ranges, anomalies and missing values quickly.

When you ask “Is there some other program that can read the values correctly that I can use?” I would say Pandas.

5

One really important thing that I want to note is that some applications mess with formatting of .csv files upon opening them, I think mac’s ‘Numbers’ apps is one of them, and google sheets might also do the same thing. If you’re ever in doubt it’s worth it to delete and redownload that .csv file.
The reason they are measuring in inches is because, although water is of course measured in volume (ml, L), the measurement in question is “sea level” which you can think of as a height.
If you want to literally see the contents of a .csv without risking the formatting getting messed up, you can try using the ‘cat’ command in your command line which just prints the text contents of the file.

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