Kaggle Dataset - Letter and numbers meaning

Question

I have come across some data on Kaggle. https://www.itl.nist.gov/div898/strd/nls/data/LINKS/DATA/MGH09.dat

I am trying to insert this to excel by copy and pasting it. What do the letters and numbers mean? How would this data look once it was converted?

Answer 1

The number 0.00256 is expressed as 2.56E-03 in scientific notation .

What this means is that the number before E (2.56 in this case) is multiplied by 10 raised to the power of -3 , which is 2.56*10^(-3) .

Similarly the number 744.67 is expressed as 7.4467E+02.

For example , your first y value (1.975000E-01) would be 0.1975 since it is 1.975 * 10^(-1) .

Your first x value (4.0E+00) would simply be 4 since it is 4.0*10^(0).

Answer 2

Now knowing the concise answer that was explained so well previously, you can use a quick little shortcut for easily converting the scientific notation by simply moving the decimal point to the left (-/NEGATIVE) or right (+/POSITIVE) the same amount of times as the exponent being expressed
(i.e., 1.23E-1 = 0.123, 1.23E-2 = 0.0123 & so on)

Conversely, you do just the opposite for +/POSITIVE exponents
(i.e., 1.23E+0 = 1.23, 1.23E+1 = 12.3, 1.23E+2 = 123 & so on)