Eruption 1079697

Date:2019-05-22
Time:1835:27
Geyser:Turban
Webcam:No
Initial:No
Major/Minor:N/A
Duration:
Time Entered:2019-05-22 18:55:46
Time Updated:2019-05-23 06:31:45
Time Uploaded:2019-05-23 06:31:45
Entrant:Graham
Observer:In park report
Submitted to:
Comments:

In the future, please do not separate out my reports and add information in my name. This entry is useless. ---- Added Here's my objection-- by removing the seconds, the most important part of the information was removed. Then my name was associated with it. Which turned it into something I did not report. Nothing personal against who did this, but objecting to how it ended up and how it looks to me. There still seems to be a strong correlation between the start times for Turban, Grand and Vent. But the data being collected now, to the minute, will never show or confirm that relationship, because it is incomplete and inaccurate. (Suzanne suggests adding "start of waves" to what I collect, but need a non-subjective definition of that, first.) For intervals in the range of 20 minutes, reporting eruption times to the minute causes an uncertainty approaching 10%. Two times are reported-- 10:00 and 10:20. If the first was 10:00:01 and second 10:20:59, that interval was actually 20m58s, 5% greater. If it was 10:00:59 and 10:20:01, it was 19m02s, 5% less. That's a difference of 1m56s, almost 10%. That's all too big and obscures subtle differences in a time series which having a large database would bring out. It gets worse when you are talking about events only a minute or three apart. In effect, it is making the data so noisy that any signal is completely lost. Yesterday I tried to enter the Beehive information I saw, but the website would not allow me to enter what I wanted to enter. I wanted to associate the Bubblers directly with the Beehive eruption timeline, to show exactly when in the Beehive eruption they were active. Putting in a time to the minute would not have been useful, so I ended up having to put the information all into the comment. Which is exactly what you don't want done. (And if I had put in a Beehive start time to the second, it probably would have been lost as not being the primary, another way my information would have been obscured or lost.) You need to allow entry to the seconds for those who want or can provide that accuracy. You need to encourage people reporting for posterity (and not just for predicting the next eruption) to do that, too. If the times I reported hadn't been "improved", I wouldn't be objecting. (Suzanne says the Android app doesn't have a way to easily capture the current time and use it to enter an eruption. A "Starting Now" button. That would be an easy way to capture to the seconds. For my app, I allowed a user option to not report seconds for those who don't want to claim that much accuracy. Also, and "ending Now" button would allow the easy capture of durations. As for device accuracy, these days phones seem to be better at timekeeping, and if you are really worried about it, you can use NTP (Network Time Protocol) to make it accurate.) Back in the early 1980s, the Elusive Vachuda and I talked about the problem of accurate times. One solution we considered was to try to encourage reporting of times to the ten-second. It smoothed out the problem of inaccurate watches a bit, and didn't seem as overly picky as going to the seconds. But we rejected it because it was hard to tell if the report was to the tens or actual seconds in some cases where an observer wanted to go to the seconds. And it didn't handle well those cases were someone was just reporting to the minute. Also, the same result could be better achieved by post processing and just dropping the final digit. The other problem is in associating multiple activities together. You need the concept of an "event". An eruption can be an event, or multiple eruptions (of the same or different geysers) can be part of an event. Non-eruptive activity can also be part of an event that may or may not culminate in an eruption. An event doesn't even need to be an eruption. The current "note" format is not conducive to entering events. A Bijou pause is an example of an event. Last year I tried to enter them as eruptions, even though they are more anti-eruptions, to make them searchable and stand out, but everyone else insisted on notes. Notes can't be easily used for intervals, where an anti-eruption could be, right? Then they entered huge lists of times for what happened during the event. I consider the activity leading up a Grand eruption, starting with the first overflow, all the way to the restarts, all as a single Grand event, and want to keep that association foremost. All that activity there is not independent, and should not be treated as such. To me, independent Turbans only means you always have to disaggregate them and then find the Grand eruption they go with. The same even more so for Vent. It's a part of the event, and should not be treated as a separate event. If Vent erupts independenly, or doesn't erupt, the event is where to note that, make it obvious and recognizable. (In both cases, those are such outliers that they will mess up all the other data and have to be extracted out anyhow.) There are other "events" out there-- Giant hot periods, Grotto starts, Fan & Mortar cycles, the Fountain complex, Splendid & Daisy (ha!). Beehive seems to headed that way, if it is going to have multiple indicators that start and stop before and during a Beehive eruption. Suzanne points out there are database methods that allows for the individual records, but keep the grouping. One solution would be to including an optional "event ID" field, which would be added only when necessary. This way searches can do the aggregation automatically. Make the linkage stronger and explicit.
Entrant: hkoenig
Time Entered:2019-05-22 22:17:24
Time Updated:2019-05-23 10:33:45
Time Uploaded:2019-05-23 10:34:03
Submitted to:
This entry is NOT useless. In the future please post vent and turban times separately as to make data more easily accessible to future researchers as there is no plan currently to make comments under eruptions be searched and spliced out.
Entrant: WillBoekel
Time Entered:2019-05-23 00:23:43
Time Updated:2019-05-23 00:25:28
Time Uploaded:2019-05-23 00:25:28
Submitted to:
WillBoekel
Time Entered:2019-05-23 00:10:16
Time Uploaded:2019-05-23 00:10:16
Submitted to:
No flags for this eruption.
No attachments for this eruption.