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I read “Using Metadata to Find Paul Revere” for class today and found it extremely interesting. At first, I took note of how they used 0 and 1 to represent whether or not the people where in an organization. This is often used in collecting data and let me to wonder why. However, as I kept reading and seeing how many other cool things that could be done with that simple layout of data, I realized how effective using 0 and 1 were and how effective numbers in general can be. This was seen in the matrix that showed which organizations are linked through the people that belong to them both. For example, North Cactus and St. Andrew’s Lodge had three people who belonged to both of them, so there was a three where those two connected in the matrix. This could not be shown as easily and clearly without using numbers, if they had used “yes” and “no” for example when showing if people belonged in the organizations. This was so interesting to me and gave me a better handle on the use of certain techniques in data, especially techniques that allow you to rearrange the data in so many ways, like what was done in this article.