Monthly Archives: October 2016

As I was studying for midterm #1, one thing that that stood out for me was that the practice midterm was focused on problem solving, rather than memorization. Before I attempted the practice midterm, I reviewed all of the lecture slides in order to remind myself of the content that had been covered and to re-answer questions that were on the slides. At this point, my aim was to memorize what we had learned in lectures and to practice data interpretation and problem solving.

Then, I attempted the practice midterm. When I looked through the questions, there were fewer questions about the content presented in lectures than I expected. I had anticipated that there would be questions about the honeybee papers, but instead, there were questions about an imaginary organism. Thus, I realized that the questions that we were given for practice were meant to help us practice applying concepts and solving problems, rather than memorizing facts presented in class.

After completing the practice midterm, I decided to adopt a different study strategy. Instead of trying to memorize facts, I focused more on answering practice questions. By doing this, I hoped that my studying would be more effective. However, after completing the actual midterm, I felt that I put less emphasis on memorization than I should have. Although the actual midterm was focused on problem solving and interpreting data that we had never seen before, some of the problem solving required knowledge of techniques. I think I made the right decision to focus less on memorizing facts in general, but I should have put more emphasis on memorizing techniques in order to more effectively answer questions that ask to propose an experiment. By shifting my study strategy, I wanted to optimize my studying by focusing on what I thought was most important (answering questions), but I put a too much attention into one aspect of studying, which led me to have gaps in other aspects. For the next midterm, I will aim to more carefully evaluate what the most important concepts are in order to make my studying more balanced which will hopefully allow me to perform better.

One concept that I understand in a new way is data interpretation. In particular, I am starting to be more thoughtful about what can and cannot be concluded from data.

I began to think differently about the concept of data interpretation when we studied the honeybee papers in class. In one paper, we observed data that showed that siRNA for DMNT3 in L1 honeybee larvae was sufficient to promote the development of mostly queens.  From this observation, I initially inferred that this meant that decreased DNA methylation in L1 larvae would lead to queen development. However, this data alone did not directly show what I had assumed, which made me realize that I could not make conclusions based on assumptions, even if the assumptions seemed logical. In order to validly conclude that decreased DNA methylation is correlated with queen development, we would need to directly measure DNA methylation levels in larvae. Through this experience, I learned that conclusions require direct supporting evidence without having to make assumptions in order to be rigorous.

I think that having a good understanding of the concept of data interpretation is important to ensure that conclusions are valid. Although it is tempting to make extended inferences based on logical assumptions, we need to keep in mind that we can only make conclusions based on the evidence that we have. If assumptions are used to make conclusions, these conclusions may be inaccurate.  Therefore, by making precise conclusions that are based only on direct evidence, we can be certain that our conclusions are reasonable.