Data in Reading Data
This Tuesday (Jan 20th) I recorded two different data sets. The first one I recorded was at the beginning of class. Since Tuesday was the first warm and sunny day Clemson had seen in a while, I decided to see how it affected what my classmates wore that day. Short-sleeves included students who had taken layers off, students who had rolled up the sleeves to their long sleeve shirts, and of course, students wearing t-shirts. Basically anyone whose arms were uncovered. Long-sleeves, on the other hand, included any student whose arms were covered. I collected the data after roll was called. The results are as follows:
Short-sleeves: 7
Long-sleeves: 9
Since the previous week had been quite chilly with temperatures ranging from 30-40 degrees F, I found it interesting how balanced the class was. It is worth noting, however, that several of the short-sleevers had either rolled up their sleeves or removed a jacket.
The second data set I recorded was a tally of the number of times “data” was uttered during the class. This included data as part of a bigger word (such as database). The word was spoken aloud 58 times. Ostensibly, this value seems normal for a data-based seminar over a 75 minute period, but the occurrences were not quite so spread out. Of the 58 times someone said “data”, 57 were during the discussion of Manovich’s “The Database” and Hayles’s “Narrative and Database.” Only once did somebody mention “data” during the discussion of Ullman’s The Bug. Perhaps this can be attributed to a wider range of topics to discuss in The Bug compared to the two articles. Or maybe after 57 times, the class (barring one individual) was ready to move on.