The questions that came of this assignment for me were – how do we collect data? How do those who collect the data interpret the data? Is data literacy a thing? How do you teach data literacy and how can we practice this skill?
We continue to hear about how Google/facebook/amazon track us and track our data in order to advertise to us and to…well who knows why else they collect the data. But I’ve not really contemplated the reality that there is a human somewhere on the other end of that who interprets the data.
The beauty of this type of visual representation in Palladio seems to be a quick way to visualize and interpret the data once you’ve grown accustomed to doing this.
It made me start to realize and think that there are so many different type of data that is mined and then deciphered on a platform like this.
I think the tricky thing in this particular assignment is that there are no wrong choices out of the 27 musical choices. No matter which people chose there could be viable justification. Whereas another type of list to choose from might be more easily interpreted which could then help to understand a group. IE questions like – do you value education? Our cohort would most likely have 100% of our group going with the affirmative on that question. Unless there was a cheeky student like myself where he/she chose to randomly select and decide. For the record (pun intended) I wouldn’t have played with a randomization if the task was more in line with my example above. My point is that if there was a group of questions where we could then start to identify a group from the data collected.
From the data collected for this exercise I was struck by the number of us who selected the ‘Flowing Stream’ and how few chose ‘String Quartet No 13 in B flat’. I almost feel like there are so many different variables that I’m not sure attempting to figure it out serves a purpose. Did we all think we should include some representation from Asia whereas a String Quartet is too western a choice? I’m not sure. It could simply be that the piece resonated with many people but for what exact reason I think we’d need to communicate directly to those people.