In compiling the data to write out this analysis, I thought of my other course, ETEC 500, where quantitative and qualitative research had been widely discussed. I wanted to start with the bigger picture of our class’s network before diving deeper into individual groups.
I started by dragging and separating each track node so that they framed the outside while the nodes representing each person remained in the middle. Because of how intertwined everything was, the process reminded me of a game I played when I was younger where a rope had to be untangled so that no nodes could be touching each other, except this time the purpose was to uncover all of these intricate connections. Now it became easier to visualize the musical pieces that had been chosen the most by the class – “Flowing Streams,” “Jaat Kahan Ho,” “Brandenburg Concerto,” & “Johnny B. Goode,” which already indicate a general variety of cultural representation and musical style – and the least picked, which was “Gavotte en rondeaux” with only 2 links. None of the tracks on the Golden Record are left out, but this is an expected and statistical likelihood since there are 19 people selecting 10 tracks from a list of 27.
Taking a deeper dive into each individual group, commonalities and differences became clearer. Some groups were more cohesive and had stronger agreements with song choices, while others had a network with many single links. I was part of Group 0, which had 4 people, and we all chose “Jaat Kahan Ho” and “Night Chant.” Most of the other tracks were widely agreed upon with 3 links, and there some outliers with only 1 link. In contrast, the only piece chosen by all 3 people in Group 1 was “Melancholy Blues” while the other selections were sporadic, highlighting more individual choice. Group 2 had 4 people and the network layout was very similar to my group where many tracks had 3 links, and quite a few were in total agreement by the members: “Johnny B. Goode,” “Kinds of Flowers,” “Izlel je Delyo Hagdutin,” and “Dark Was the Night.” Only a few songs had 1 link. Group 3 had 3 people and was similar to Group 1 in that only “Flowing Streams” was chosen by everyone while many of the other tracks had single links. Group 4 had 5 people and their network had the most amount of commonalities. “Brandenburg Concerto” and “Senegal Percussion” shared 5 links, while “Morning Star Devil Bird,” “Wedding Song,” and “Flowing Streams” had 4 links. There were some sparse connections, but many members were in agreement with their selections.
This network only shows the quantitative side of the “equation,” so to speak. We can see what is chosen, by how many people, what parts of the world are represented, and what tracks are chosen as priorities over others. Two unanswered questions, though not too important, are how the groups were formed and how the data would change if the groups were more evenly distributed (e.g. one of the members from the group of 5 were placed into one of the groups of 3). I could try to speculate why certain pieces have more popularity over others using my own criteria of historical significance, cultural significance, musical diversity, and personal significance. I could also come up with arbitrary reasons like age and demographic differences to my own. However, this qualitative side of the “equation” would be better served by going to each classmate’s blog and noting each person’s rationale for why they chose their 10 pieces and looking for similarities and differences there. This would significantly extend the time required to analyze a network as vast as ours, but it would be worth seeing what cannot be shown by crunching numerical data.
