Unit 1 Quiz Answers

Question 1

This course requires that you have the CoastWatch Utilities installed.

• True

• False

General feedback: You need to be able to run the CoastWatch Utilities commands to get the most benefit from the course, follow along with the material, and complete the bonus exercises, assignments and some quiz questions. The course overview page goes over where to download the software and tips on setting it up for command line use.

Question 2

What do CoastWatch data files contain?

• Global file attributes and numerical data arrays bundled into a scientific data format

• Standard JPEG image data as color pixels, readable in any image viewer

• Text and images in a standard rich text format

• 32-bit floating point GeoTIFF data usable in any GIS software

General feedback: See the CoastWatch Data Files page for information about the contents of data files.

Question 3

Two scientific data formats used by CoastWatch are:

• SHP and DBF

  Answer feedback: SHP and DBF are common filename extensions relating to ESRI shapefiles. Shapefiles contain point, line, and polygon coordinate data and DBF files contain their associated attributes. Although these files can be used with the CoastWatch Utilities, they are not considered scientific data formats.

• PNG and JPEG

  Answer feedback: PNG and JPEG files are color image file formats, not scientific data formats.

• KML and XML

  Answer feedback: KML format files are used to annotate 2D and 3D geographic data. XML format, while it can theoretically contain almost any type of data, is not considered a scientific data format.

• HDF and NetCDF

General feedback: See the CoastWatch Data Files page for information about what scientific data files contain.

Question 4

The CoastWatch Utilities only has command line tools useful for scripting, no graphical user interface.

• True

• False

General feedback: There are both GUI and command line tools. See the Graphical Versus Command Line page for example screenshots of each one.

Question 5

Uses for the CoastWatch Utilities are: (choose all answers that apply)

• Generic math and interactive data analysis

• 3D rendering

• Data resampling and conversion

• Displaying a set of satellites in orbit

General feedback: See the Software Functionality page for a list of all the functionality.

Question 6

Two other software packages useful for working with HDF and NetCDF files are:

• HDFView and the NetCDF Operators (NCO)

• PaintShop Pro and Excel

• Microsoft Access and Microsoft Word

• VLC and Google Earth

General feedback: HDF and NetCDF are specialized scientific data formats not usable in common office, video, or image manipulation programs. The HDF and NetCDF Software page gives links to some other useful packages.

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