• Question: Which types of programs do you use on your computer at work?

    Asked by jonty2600 to James P on 2 Jul 2012.
    • Photo: James Pope

      James Pope answered on 2 Jul 2012:

      Hi jonty2600,

      I run a number of programs on my computer at work. I use all the usual programs such as Microsoft Word (for writing reports), Excel (for some graph work), Publisher (for making posters for conferences) and Powerpoint (for making slideshow presentations for conferences or for going to schools).

      I then use some scientific programs, either ArcGis which I use for plotting the results from a model called BIOME4 and comparing the results to geological data with a statistic called Cohen’s Kappa Stat and I also use Matlab, a prorgam for processing data and changing it into new formats that make it easier for me to use, matlab requires writing in code to create command programs and then running them. I also have a plotting program I use called Ferret, which allows me to make global maps of the data I have produced and also does some simple calculations for me.

      I then run two models, the first of which is my big climate model caleld HadCM3, I access this through a program called the UMUI (Unified Model User Interface) which is the way I run HadCM3. This program was written by the Met Office and is used by hundreds of scientists! Finally I run the BIOME4 model on my desktop, it takes climate data in a certain format (I produce this file in Matlab) and then it predicts what sort of vegetation you have in each area based on the data that is given to it.

      My machine has two operating system set ups either Linux (which I run the UMUI, Ferret and Matlab in) or Windows (which I run ArcGIS, and all microsoft programs on!).

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