For my definition assignment, I chose to define the term “extrapolation.” As a statistics major, I am incredibly familiar with the term and originally thought that defining it would be easy; however, I did not realize that it would be as difficult as it was considering we had to define it without using technical terms and with the mindset of someone who has no previous knowledge. It was slightly tedious creating the expanded definition, but not so much the sentence and parenthetical definitions.
With Robele’s peer review, I was able to correct the areas that I lacked in knowledge. He gave good advice on where to expand the definition slightly more, and where I accidentally used technical jargon without noticing. Similarly, he gave excellent advice when saying that the example I used regarding paychecks was not exactly extrapolation. Without his review, I would not have been able to improve my expanded definition to its fullest potential.
While peer-reviewing Robele’s definition of “correlation coefficient”, I noticed how I am more inclined to first-off edit the grammar mistakes within a paper or report, and secondly, the content. Similarly, the peer-review assignment definitely helped my content-editing because I was aware that my editing would be read and used with great respect and my advice would be the only one used; whereas if multiple individuals were editing, I probably would have focused primarily on grammar. This has been an issue of mine for years, but I am trying to work my way towards editing both simultaneously.
Overall, this unit has been very helpful in provoking me to edit more and focus my attention on the non-technical reader. I think I’ll be more aware of this now when writing emails and other various documents.