Okay, the visual from Palladio was actually pretty hard to interpret. There are so many paths and nodes that it is hard to see how all the nodes are interlinked. I can’t even imagine what the map will look like when considering the whole interweb! I had to use the filters to help fine-tune the image to see the data points better.
Once I applied the filters, I noticed that the songs I picked were similar to Amy’s and Seime’s. Everyone was only allowed to choose 10 pieces out of 27, so each could have 10 edges to contribute. The visualization does not provide any information regarding why our choices are similar. I can’t make any assumptions about age, gender, or cultural background. The only thing that we all have in common is that we are working professionals. Without an explanation of each individual’s choices, it is tough to determine why we picked the tracks we decided on. What about the ways that we didn’t like? There isn’t an explanation for why we didn’t choose the tracks. There aren’t edges that connect our nodes to the songs we didn’t pick. Through the visual representation of our data, I cannot make any implications on why others didn’t choose the other tracks.
We only have access to a small set of data through Palladio. The collection of data that is available for the entire web is going to be more complex. According to Code.org’s Video, search engine companies run programs to count the “popularity” of using certain words (2017). In return, the search engine populates a list that will satisfy our search needs. Is this really reliable? From personal experience, the search engine meets most of my search needs; however, sometimes, I cannot find what I need. This was probably because of my spelling mistakes or my inability to formulate my search request. Do these programs take a tally of spelling mistakes? From my failed search requests, I only know that they failed because I clicked on the first few links that populated. Although my search request failed, these search engine programs still accounted for my click. The data collected from the web could also be interlinked around the world. Someone from Australia and I can search the same terms. However, I have heard my friends from Asia say that they cannot search for specific videos or links because they are blocked. I cannot attest to this because I haven’t experienced it myself.
Reference:
Code.org. (2017, June 13). The Internet: How search works [Video]. YouTube.
