For this task the Palladio data tool was used to show a matrix of data that was collected and compiled showing which songs each person chose for the Task 8: Golden Record assignment.

When I initially opened up Palladio, I was honestly a little overwhelmed. However, upon closer inspection, I was able to see which songs were less popular among our classmates. The songs that were placed on the outskirts of the matrix showed to have less edges connecting them to other nodes. The fewer edges a node had, the less people chose those songs for their Golden Record curation. Whereas the songs concentrated in the middle of the matrix are the ones that more people selected. This pattern was also noticeable among the classmates as well. Classmates with more edges connected to other nodes (classmates) tended to be closer to the middle. Whereas classmates who chose “less popular” songs were closer to the outskirts of the matrix.

The above image is of myself grouped with 3 other classmates. We share quite a lot of similar songs. I’m assuming they used a similar criteria as me when choosing their songs: to represent the different continents of the world. However, this assumption that I’m making is probably inaccurate. People can end up making the same choices for very different reasons. I wouldn’t know unless I went to their individual blogs and read up on their reasoning. Thus from purely looking at the nodes and edges in the matrix, it’s difficult to state WHY my classmates chose the songs they did or excluded certain songs.

One interesting thing I noticed for this grouping was that the three songs that I chose without using the continents criteria were the ones that no one else in this group had linked to. The Fairie Round, Johnny B. Goode, and the Magic Flute were all chosen because I liked the sound of it and nothing else. I also noticed that I had one more singularity in comparison to everyone else who had just two.

I found that the people I had the highest number of similar songs to were Allison, Ben, and Ian. However, only Allison was selected to be placed in a group with me. Why weren’t us 4 placed in a group together? Why was I grouped with Meipsy, Allison and Chris? Did we all have the same criteria for the songs we chose? Where there more connections between us four? Or was it purely random? There is no way to figure out the criteria for these groupings as well. Palladio probably had to do some data calculations to make these groupings based on a set of criteria set by our course instructor. Thus it’s important to note that it’s difficult to derive qualitative data from these types of matrixes. What is being left out and what is being portrayed here?