data set

Last year, a group of researchers applied machine learning to the largest existing data set of sperm whale codas, from The Dominica Sperm Whale Project, to demonstrate that sperm whale codas can be sensitive to how they are used — that is, the context created by surrounding codas may change a given coda's intended meaning, just the way words in human sentences create a context that indicate, or change, the intended meaning of a given word.

"This is not a climate modeling study," she said of her work, adding her hope is that other climate scientists can use the data set to help inform future studies of the Red Planet.

That data set had subtitles from OpenSubtitles.org, a website that provides subtitles to movies and TV shows in different languages, according to a November story from the Atlantic.

Vidale said he was busy studying graphs that record ground vibrations caused by seismic waves when one data set “curiously stood out from the rest.”

However, the curious data set that Vidale came across defied this logic, prompting his team to realize that the differences they observed were likely caused by changes in the shape of the inner core.