Uni Stuff > The University Journey Journal
A turtle's exploration of the world of science & leadership
hums_student:
--- Quote from: Bri MT on July 29, 2020, 11:14:03 am ---The difference of course being that psych is a science and economics (as far as I can tell) is not (evidence based decision making doesn't have to be scientific in nature??? why fight so hard for something that doesn't truly fit??
--- End quote ---
I will not hesitate to fight you.
How did you find Tidyverse, by the way? Would you say it's necessary for learning and using R properly? We didn't learn Tidyverse for my R subject but we had to use ggplot2, which I think is included in Tidyverse.
I'm doing macro in sem 2 as well, interested to hear how you find it. :)
Bri MT:
--- Quote from: hums_student on July 29, 2020, 03:59:48 pm ---I will not hesitate to fight you.
How did you find Tidyverse, by the way? Would you say it's necessary for learning and using R properly? We didn't learn Tidyverse for my R subject but we had to use ggplot2, which I think is included in Tidyverse.
I'm doing macro in sem 2 as well, interested to hear how you find it. :)
--- End quote ---
Uh oh.
If you present a stronger argument than using data & evidence -> science, then I'm happy to listen.
I don't think you need tidyverse but I really like it and found it very useful. Hopefully you agree that ggplot2() is great. I never want to make an excel graph again. I also liked doing a lot of data manipulation work using tidyverse. I really like piping, which allows you to take the result of one line of code and make it an argument of a function in the next line without binding it to anything.
example
e.g. first code chunk is get the rivertrawls tibble and group the rows together with the same subcategory. Then filter each of these groups so only the 1st row in each group is kept. Then show the subcategory of each the remaining rows, ordering them by their subcategory. (In the end you're left only with 1 row for each subcategory displayed in alphabetical order).
I've downloaded some satellite data of the ocean (showing cholophyll concentrations) to learn how to analyse this but the stuff for that seems to be more old style R. I'm hoping that after I get comfortable with it I'll be able to translate it across into being compatible with a more tidyverse way of doing things.
I'll try to keep updated more often! I think macro will be good (otherwise I wouldn't be taking it since it's an elective) - hopefully that turns out to be the case for both of us :)
hums_student:
--- Quote from: Bri MT on July 29, 2020, 04:36:57 pm ---If you present a stronger argument than using data & evidence -> science, then I'm happy to listen.
--- End quote ---
my very scientific reasoningmaths + assignments with right/wrong answers = science. fight me.Tidyverse looks really neat! Yeah ggplot2 is great, way superior to excel. We used Stargazer which also gives some nice looking tables when doing regression analysis, but tidyverse looks more versatile.
All the best with sem 2! :)
Bri MT:
--- Quote from: hums_student on July 30, 2020, 08:32:25 am ---my very scientific reasoningmaths + assignments with right/wrong answers = science. fight me.Tidyverse looks really neat! Yeah ggplot2 is great, way superior to excel. We used Stargazer which also gives some nice looking tables when doing regression analysis, but tidyverse looks more versatile.
All the best with sem 2! :)
--- End quote ---
I haven't used Stargazer before. We're always told for out reports to format our tables using what we've generated from R but not copying it. I'll have to check it out at some point.
Good luck to you for sem 2 as well! :)
I haven't had classes for all of my subjects yet but here we go:
Monday: I had classes from 8am - 1pm with no break (trends in ecology 1 hour lecture followed by a 4 hour impact through science workshop which also clashed with a macroeconomics lecture. My TuteSmart year 10 maths class is also on Monday so a busy day for me to be sure.
Trends in ecology: I think I'm going to really like this unit. When I was doing the readings I wasn't quite sure how relevant they would be but I'm glad I did them as it gave more depth and context to the lecture without being one of those cases where the lecture just rehashes the readings anyway. Essentially we were talking about how when you look at a species you can find rules for it and predict outcomes because it's not that complex, when you look at a huge scale you get general trends which can be fairly easily understood, but when you look at the middle it's a complex mess of detail and interaction that's exceptionally hard to find rules for. In fact, it's looking increasingly like a lot of what ends up happening with communities (which species are dominant etc. ) is mostly random. I've got another lecture for this in about an hour, which iirc is focused on how people are trying to understand communities and also quickly looking at Charles Darwin (& how the person with such a huge contribution to ecology wasn't really an ecologist).
Impact through science 3b: It was so good to see the other people in my cohort again :). This unit is also the first time we've had Jake who is basically an assistant lecture that was in the first cohort of global challenges to graduate. The actual class content could've been useful condensed a bit more but thankfully we did get small breaks during the class which allowed us to quickly grab food etc. Very importantly, we found out what our projects are, what partners we are working with and who is in our team (this class is kind of a mini-honours). My team is 4 people (only 1 of whom I've worked with before in-class and that was only for 1 assignment) and we're working on improving how citizen science (i.e. non-scientists helping science through things like data collection) is used for the Marine Mammal Foundation. Half of the team has worked with MMF before, our main point of contact is with an ex-GC-er who I've done a speech with before (& so briefly met), and our majors collectively are in chemistry, ecology & conservation biology, and zoology. We've got a team meeting today and have organised a meeting with the MMF team for later in the week, we've been doing a bit of research and thinking to pick apart the context we're working with & I'm keen to have the meeting. This project works really well with my interests in marine biology, science engagement in the broader community, and data analysis for biology so I'm sure this is going to be a fantastic experience.
Indigenous science So. much. reading. Partially because I went ahead and did a bunch of extra reading for the general section on the reading list rather than just our week 1 readings. Part of our week 1 readings is 3 hours of watching the First Australians documentary and given that we're quizzed on it the actual time taken is easily longer. I prefer reading a slab of text rather than watching a video so this is hard but oh well. Week 1 seems to be a lot about giving more context and dispelling myths about Indigenous peoples (e.g. the hunter gatherer myth, how many people nations & languages there were on this continent, timelines etc.). This is definitely an area where I have a lot to learn and I'm glad I'm doing this as a unit where we get the chance to learn from and have discussions with Indigenous scientists because it's hard to know what to learn when you don't know what you don't know; I'd find these topics very hard to learn independently. I'm sad for how much knowledge has been permanently lost and/or destroyed but I'm hopeful at much is able to be learnt.
Macroeconomics haven't caught up on my lecture yet. As hum_student pointed out - maths + assignments with right/wrong answers. Atm we're going over things like GDP calculation and Moodle is giving my an overabundance of emails from people posting to be added to a group chat (why didn't someone set up a link to collect names rather than everyone individually replying and spamming us all?). One day the flood of emails will end. I had blissfully forgotten that first year units were like this. Fortunately, some of the discussion posts are actually useful for learning from and clarifying concepts.
Edit: in the time it took me to write this I received half a dozen macroeconomics emails :/
Bri MT:
hello again.
I have a macroeconomics exam on Monday so I've been doing some prep for that then the week after a trends in ecology exam. Indigenous science and impact through science 3b don't have exams so in a week and a half might be my last exam ever. I'll still have uni next year but I don't know of any honours years having exams and challenges honours certainly doesn't.
A few people in my cohort will be graduating this year with a bachelor of science rather than staying around and getting bachelor of science advanced - global challenges (honours). It's unfortunate that they don't get any recognition for being in gc but I guess it is what it is.
The way that honours works in global challenges is that you work in a team for a client and both of those are picked by gc staff. We'll find out what we've been assigned next year when we start in February. Hopefully I get a client brief which works for my team and gives good opportunity for skills development. The course director knows me well and what I want to get out of honours so fingers crossed.
It feels more dramatic to me that QCE exams are so far through than my (undergrad) studies drawing to an end. I do want to do postgrad eventually but I'd like to enter the workforce fulltime for years first. It's been suggested that since none of us (in my cohort) took gap years that we could do that after graduating but I can't imagine having a year of free time & I'm financially independent so that's a consideration too.
Anyway, not sure where I'm going with this, I'll probably post again soon (for my jj standards anyway)
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