The News is not Good

Here's the latest from ASU:

1. Crater group: Did this group not read my comment on their question. You CAN NOT tell which crater from 2 different surfaces is older – you can look at them and state which appears to be older/younger based on SPECIFIC features. The question as written is not answerable. They still did not talk much about what erosional processes may take effect on Mars. This should most definitely be included in a final report. If they are looking at 4 Mars images, they should also look at 4 Moon images. What’s to say that all Moon crater images will look the same? Comparing just 1 moon image is unrealistic. How will counting the number of small, medium and large craters in an image help answer their question? If you are looking at craters with the same diameter, and then you graph the diameter of those craters on the Moon and Mars, what will that graph look like? Will it show anything that relates to the question? As for the graph that was sent later – they need to explain this graph, cite the source and explain how this fits in with their project.

2. Lava tubes: Was anything much changed? There were images that were included, which was helpful. Is looking at only 5 images much different than look at only 3? If you are going to take measurements, why wouldn’t you graph your data? Why take measurements if this is the case? You won’t even plot your images on a map so that others know what lava tubes you look at on different volcanoes? And how do you determine if one lava tube appears older or younger than another? This is not clearly stated. What SPECIFIC characteristics will allow you to relatively age date a lava tube. The Pythagorean theorem will not provide you with the correct depth of a lava tube. How will you measure the length and the width? What happened to a data table?

3. Channels: What characteristics are they looking for? They have stated numerous times how lava tubes, flows and water channels form – but what are the distinctive characteristics that allow you to know whether you are looking at one feature versus another? How many images will you look at? The main problem here is that there are no characteristics of any feature that is described. There is still no data analysis section – how can any science experiment have no data analysis section? If you are going to analyze your image – how are you going to analyze it – there is no description of this. What characteristics are you looking for to analyze?

**For all groups they need to consider that their small amount of data gives them only a starting point for making some preliminary observations. It does not allow them to draw any reliable conclusions. They can state this, and should state this, if they only use these small numbers of images/data for the research. They also ALL need to specify what specific characteristics they will be looking for.**

There won't be time to do ANOTHER rewrite. Let's go with using archived images.