Thread: PLEASE HELP

My professor assigned this program for us but she explained very poorly and i honstelly don't understand this at all how to do this. I have been staring at it for a week now. I just started programming so i don't understand very much right now.

Write a Java program that reads data from an input file (provided with this description) called weatherData.txt, performs a set of calculations on the data, and writes results out to one of three output files. The file contains a series of double values representing data about weather over a period of time.

The data are arranged in rows, with have one or two numbers in each row. The first number represents a temperature in degrees Fahrenheit. The second number, if present, represents either a wind speed or a relative humidity reading. The first value determines the meaning of the second value, and whether or not it is even present, as follows:
if the temperature is at or above 80 degrees Fahrenheit, the second number represents relative humidity; for example, 75% relative humidity would be recorded in the file as 0.75
if the temperature is below 50 degrees Fahrenheit, the second number represents wind speed in miles per hour
if the temperature is between 50 and 80 (exclusive), there is no second number

Calculating wind chill factor
Wind chill factor is the effect of wind speed on perceived temperature; the calculated value represents how the air temperature feels on exposed skin with the wind blowing. The formula for calculating WCF is:
WCF = 35.74 + 0.6215T – 35.75(V0.16) + 0.4275T(V0.16)
where T is the temperature in degrees Fahrenheit and V is the wind speed in miles per hour.

Calculating heat index
Heat index is the summer equivalent of WCF; it represents the effect of humidity on air temperature. The formula for calculating HI may be found in the description for program assignment #1.

Calculating Celsius equivalent
tempC = (5/9)(temp-32)
// hint: be careful with data types!

Your program should:
Open the files (one for input, three for output; you will need to create the output files, but you should copy the input file to your own computer or flash drive to use for your program)
Read data from the input file and process each input line as follows:
If the temperature value is 50 or below, read the corresponding wind speed, calculate WCF and send output to the file cold.txt
If the temperature value is 80 or above, read the corresponding relative humidity, calculate HI and send output to the file hot.txt
If neither of the above is true, calculate the Celsius equivalent of the temperature and send the output to the file conversions.txt

Output format
Each file should present your data in tabular form, with headings. For example, hot.txt should look something like this:

Temperature
Humidity
Heat Index
82
50
83
95
50
105

here is the input file weatherData.txt

You've posted your entire assignment without asking a specific question, and unfortunately that makes it difficult if not impossible for us volunteers in this and other forums to be able to help you. I know that the task seems daunting, but its eminently do-able if you follow certain rules some of which include:

• read your assignment over several times to make sure you fully understand it.
• If any specific part confuses you, then post your question here. Don't simply post the entire assignment as there's little specific help we can give, but if you ask about specific points such as "this statement here confuses me -- ' ... '", we'll be much better able to give you specific help.
• Most important, break the big task down into small tasks.
• Then start trying to solve each small task in isolation.
• This way if you get stuck at a specific step, again you can come back here with your code attempts, your errors, and your specific questions. Do this and we can help you correct your code and move you forward.

Some of the specific steps that it seems to me you must tackle include

• Reading data in from the data file. I would recommend that you first try to write a small program that does nothing but read in the text in the file and then prints it out to the screen.
• Once you've solved that, you can work on extracting the information held in the file line by line (called rows in your assignment).
• Get each line of information one at a time, a while loop and a Scanner will work well for this.
• Try to extract the information held on each line. Either a Scanner or String#split(...) could work well for this.
• Convert the number Strings held on the line into actual numbers.
• Then try to analyze them.
• ... keep going till solved or you run into a speed bump.
• And if you run into a speed bump, come on back, show your code and ask your questions.

Good luck