Weirdness in the Data

There's some weirdness in my data.  Weird can be good; unexpected results are interesting.  Weird also means a lot of re-checking of data.

 

Brazil seems to devote a tiny fraction of its land to agriculture.  Of the years I'm studying (1990-2007) no state has more than half of a percent of its land devoted to agriculture at any point.  At least, this is what the data is telling me.

 

For comparison, Illinois uses about 80% of its total land for agriculture.

 

So, I've been re-checking, and re-checking. My first thought was that I'd mis-read the units on the state areas.  My data had a state with over a billion square kilometers (Pará).  But, that turns out to be true.  Next, I figured that maybe I'd made a mistake in converting from hectares to sq. km. But, I think I got that right, too.

 

The most recent thing I've checked is if the units on the reported areas planted made sense.  Maybe they said 'hectares' when they meant 'sq. km'.  I verified this by looking at tons/hectare.  But, that seems reasonable at least within an order of magnitude (54 tons of sugarcane/hectare seeemed plausible). 

 

So, the next thing to do is to talk to some Brazillians, and see what they have to say.  But, it's making me really curious.

Cool Brazil Research

It's my second day in Brazil. Yesterday, I finished the afternoon at
work, and headed home with Werner and the other students.

Later in the evening, we went to a nice Polish dinner, and then headed
back to the apartment for some Caipirinhas. I went to bed early and
tried to catch up on some sleep.

Today, we returned to IBMEC and my research started off really well.
I figured out how to make Motion Charts with google spreadsheets. I'm
entirely too happy about the ability to make cool multi-dimensional
charts. Here's an example of the things I'm looking at, hopefully the
script will embed properly.

Arrived in Brazil

I just arrived in Rio. My flights were pretty uneventful and got in
on time, and the layover in Miami was really easy. I´ve made it to
IBMEC and am trying to figure out where to start my research.
Everything´s going well, and the other guys here seem like a lot of
fun.

It looks like I might be going to Paraty this weekend, and that would
be great. I´ll update soon when I´ve got some more news, and when
I´ve caught up on sleep.