The reading was a thread on twitter that highlighted the use and misuse of social media data. It was a very insightful text. I especially liked that the author addressed what runs through peoples minds regarding anonymous release of this data but in fact by releasing different pieces of private information, they give the public the tools to trace this back to its origin.  I follow MG’s thought process on whether or not making accounts “private” could change the amount of information gathered or if the user has no control at all over any of this. 

Today’s article on the FAIR principles of data use gave four broad methods of effectively producing fair data and further explained these ways. It tells us that data should aim to be   Find able, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable.  It is, however, slightly difficult to this achievement as there is no universal storage of data that ensure that all data recorded is done with unique, non repeated identifiers and are done in language language and format that is accessible to all. Also, technology advances at different velocities in different parts of the world and advanced techniques that make data FAIR in some areas could also be making it harder to understand or translate for those in other areas.

Today’s article, Debates in the Digital Humanities, is a very interesting and insightful one. The article initially points out the strong biases that develop against more technological approaches to some things and makes use of printed media received as more reliable sources of information than those published online, because it is the most conventional form, to some, when faced with an ‘easier’ alternative it became the ‘true’ form. This ideology is also seen in the acceptance of Digital Humanities as a true form of expressing scholarly intelligence. The article is well written with in text citations that help with references but a lot of the claims made are open to questioning even though the reasoning is logical and can be followed.

The article published by the Political Geography for today’s class on mapping discusses the relationships between the demographics in Los Angeles and the political trends in the various areas within that state.  The maps done to demonstrate these trends, however, do not effectively communicate this to the audience as some of them make use of percentages and not actual figures, some lack borders that distinguish the individual states and the color coding of one map made use of colors that were too close to each other.

The brief article describes the introduction of data analysis software that help in distinguishing geographical locations mentioned in text based on their context and proximity to other adjectives that describe the unique locations. This was used to map out locations of interviews as well as the locations mentioned in the interviews. This is a useful way to understand and analyse migration patterns however the visualizations that explain this data are quite confusing. By placing only a section of what seems to be some landmass, I am unable to identify this location as a continent, country or state.  Also, the labels are to little to offer any form of guidance and the only thing I am able to deduce from this data presentation is that people moved around and lived in an area that seems to be the west coast of some bigger area.

I really found this article about the dynamics of American films in Aurstralia as I am a film fanatic. I love movies and its very interesting to see that the United States expects that American films will make 10% of the revenue it makes in America in Australia. The 10% rule is what this article is about, and it was derived on the film’s marketing, advertising spending, release scheduling, and the “number of prints abroad based on its home performance”. Just like many things now this study was made possible by the great increase in digital sources of information. Some of my skepticism of the 10% rule is that the database that this idea was founding on “does not track other types of viewing such as DVD, streaming, illegal downloading, etc.” I know this would be very hard data to capture but it feels wrong to not include DVD’s. DVD’s have a profit margin of 67% which can greatly contribute to a movie’s success. The statistical analysis was conducted using non-parametric test which have lower power and will present less statistically significant results.  Also, not as important but really caught my interest was that documentaries peaked interest more than action/adventure movies in Australia. I also liked the images a lot they (for the most part) were easy to follow and help clarify a lot of the text that was going on.

I really found this article about the dynamics of American films in Aurstralia as I am a film fanatic. I love movies and its very interesting to see that the United States expects that American films will make 10% of the revenue it makes in America in Australia. The 10% rule is what this article is about, and it was derived on the film’s marketing, advertising spending, release scheduling, and the “number of prints abroad based on its home performance”. Just like many things now this study was made possible by the great increase in digital sources of information. Some of my skepticism of the 10% rule is that the database that this idea was founding on “does not track other types of viewing such as DVD, streaming, illegal downloading, etc.” I know this would be very hard data to capture but it feels wrong to not include DVD’s. DVD’s have a profit margin of 67% which can greatly contribute to a movie’s success. The statistical analysis was conducted using non-parametric test which have lower power and will present less statistically significant results.  Also, not as important but really caught my interest was that documentaries peaked interest more than action/adventure movies in Australia. I also liked the images a lot they (for the most part) were easy to follow and help clarify a lot of the text that was going on.

The reading for today, by Lincoln A. Mullen,  is an example of how the presentation of visual data in ways that the general public can easily understand and absorb is not only effective communication of information but also a way of making knowledge and history that would otherwise be ignored accessible to all. Some parts of the text explain how so many governmental offenses to the basic human rights of individuals are legalized simply because the law refuses to acknowledge them or because they are “invisible”.  I think data visualization is useful most especially in cases like these because by presenting such masses of data the public get to see and acknowledge what is being done and the scale at which it is done and then choose what to do with this knowledge. They could become part of the movement against it.

Feminist Data Visualization Response

This was a very interesting article that had me alter the way that I thought about data. I had been exposed to feminist theory throughout my whole life whether it be articles, school, or other situations but I never had connected it to data and visualizing research. I realized also my close mindedness think that feminism was just about women but rather it draws our attention to question of epistemology. It was also very interesting that it drew upon “a set of canonical and contemporary theories from the humanities.” These theories we used to show emphasis to the nature of knowledge and perception. I also learned a lot within the section titled Feminist human computer. Specifically, about peoples work on the exploration of the implications of feminist theory and learned a lot about how the human-computer interaction and how this helps promote these visualizations. Not only this but also digital humanities as a whole. There are still some things to be critical with this article however. We have to think of the context which is from a particular social, cultural, and material context. This makes the visualization created from this feminist approach so one must think have this output might be received.

I found this reading very engaging! The topic of how unemployment effects psychology is very interesting. This seems to me to be a hard field to collect data on however. This is due to how psychologically everyone is wired differently so that making a broad logistic regression on a sample of 7,897 individuals from a study from 1992 makes me skeptical. It was also interesting that this study wasn’t guided by a formal theory and that an Economic theory provided little guidance. This was surprising because the whole study is based around the economic status of someone so one would thing that a theory would support some of the finding. I was also confused by some of the language that was used such as “ The interpretation of each continuous quantitative risk factor is that the antilog of the logistic coefficient represents the estimated increase in the odds of being in each subsequent range of the relevant measure of psychological well-being per unit increase in the particular characteristic such as age in years” This is a lot of information that is strung out and hard to interpret (at least for me it is). Some of the work that is sighted throughout the text makes me question further the validity of this paper. Specifically, when the author goes into how addition characteristics must be considered to determine an individual’s level of psychological well-being. All the sources say different things in regards to age and well-being.