Update 2013-09-07.md

2013-09-07.md

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+1. Although I've had little problems setting up the IRC on my desktop and the Virtual Box, I'm not sure I quite understand the reasons and mechanics behind everything. I think trying to understand what I'm doing AS I do it has been the most challenging. Even GitHub is still a little confusing for me to navigate through. I've tried to understand it more by going through the FAQs and asking around. It's helped but I'd still say I need to familiarize myself more with the website. 
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+2. It was when I was trying to understand GitHub. Someone explained it to me in simple terms the beginning of this week: "GitHub is used so that multiple people can collaborate on a code together and the revisions are all saved." You might have said that during class but I might have missed it. Anyhow, this concise and simple description really helped me grasp its function, and I would describe it the same way to someone unfamiliar to GitHub.
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+3. Look at other online resources. If information I'm looking for isn't where it's supposed to be, google it. (That's how I'm learning more about GitHub). 

2013-09-14.md

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+1. I still find the problem of navigating through GitHub to be challenging, especially in the process of submitting Weekly Reflections. I guess I'm just confused about whether we're creating new markdown files in our Reflections repository and submitting each separate markdown file each week as a pull request? 
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+2. I'm really glad that we all got together as a class to discuss problems we're all facing and things we need from the instructor. It made me realize that we were all mostly on the same level and equally confused about many things we were installing. Like it was said in class, it would be great to have some sort of road map of what we're tackling every week. It'll also really help if the IRC on Adium created a log. (I know you said you would create one but where should we expect to find it?)
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+3. To be honest, I don't think I would have taken a different approach at all towards learning any of this material. Perhaps I would try to reach out to other people in my discussion and we can talk about what we're supposed to be doing. 

2013-09-21.md

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+1. I thought the guest lecture from this Tuesday was extremely interesting. It's great to see statistics when it's employed in research outside the classroom and what kind of information it can give you. The most difficulty I had this week in class, was understanding Thursday's lecture. Part of me feels like this is probably because I haven't gotten an in-depth look at the upcoming earthquake project yet. My memory of Poisson processes was a little rusty but I think with a little review of Stat 134 material, I should be up to speed again. I'm actually really looking forward to this assignment. 
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+2. No "Aha!" moments this week but the Tuesday lecture was oddly and surprisingly inspiring. It really made me excited to apply skills I learn in statistics to actual research, and even the data collection process (as tedious as it probably is) seemed exciting to me. 
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+3. There's not much I would change about this week except arriving to class on time (sorry!!). I was also reminded that I needed to review concepts in probability and statistics. 

2013-09-28.md

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+1. Somebody mentioned it in class on Thursday and I definitely agree. I think that's it's about time we as students start to get our hands dirty and start programming, and doing projects. Although I understand the need for everybody to be on the same page, those who are having difficulty should go up to office hours. I don't think it's fair to ask everyone else to wait up for them. The guest lectures we had last week really made me excited to start actually working. I think the material sounds really exciting and I'd love to start as soon as we can. I really love that our class has a warm environment to it and that the instructors genuinely care about each individual. That being said, we should start and those who are behind need to take responsibility to catch up. 
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+3. I realized that I don't understand much about the need for data reproducibility. You could explain to me its importance but because I've never needed it myself, I feel like there's a lot I'm missing. Often times when I tell people I'm a Statistics major, they go, "Oh wow, so you must know all about data science and that stuff," and to be honest I don't. I feel like learning all these small concepts in these classes aren't giving me a big applicable picture of Stats in the real world. Hopefully this class helps me with that. 

2013-10-05.md

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+1. I'm a little unsure why I need to start up vagrant and iPython to do data wrangling for the assignment this week with the questionnaire. This is partly due to the class time we dedicated to discussing tools that each role would be using and I had the idea that we could use whatever tool we needed to organize and extract our data. I also think it would be great to have a place where we can post links for resources that can be helpful (tutorials, etc.)
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+3. Doing research on google on my own really helped me in understanding things about this assignment. For example, I had no idea what vim was until I googled it and then tried to understand the tool and its commands on my own. I'm starting to follow my own advice on looking at other resources if I get confused which is great. 

2013-10-12.md

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+1. Even though we had one week to complete the assignment, I found that I learned more doing this project than I had for the past 2 weeks. One input I do have for the assignment is that it could have had more instruction. Office Hours seemed almost mandatory for us because I don't think we would have gotten anywhere without coming in over the weekend. Luckily we were able to meet up and put aside a lot of time for the project. Something we as a group should work on is better communication in terms of who's doing what, because at one point, two people were doing the same job. Other than that, I love our team dynamic, and that we help each other out rather than strictly sticking to our given roles. Something to add about that, I feel like it would be great if we could rotate roles every now and then. I don't want to just curate data the whole time. Another thing we could work on, is working together online in the cases where we can't meet. 
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+2. I'm anxious and a bit excited for the next project. I love where this class is going, and also, I'd like to add, that through this project, I finally understand how to use GitHub (yayy!)

2013-11-17.md

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+This weekend I met up with the rest of the newly-created Reproducibility team (Team R) with Wen, Arif, Tristan, and myself. Our overall goal is to check the reproducibility of all the other groups. It was difficult to plan ahead of time our schedule since many groups have not started/finished any of their work. Since the Quakers have finished their code already, our immediate SMART goal for this week is to check the reproducibility of that group's code, and make sure we can call R on that code from Python. 
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+We were discussing what our overall group's responsibilities would be. What we're planning on doing is: 
+(A) Making sure that each group is producing what they say they are producing. That includes figuring out *what* each each group's end goal is as well. Some are still unclear on what they want to do.
+(B) Make sure we can call R or whatever tools/programs that the different groups are using
+(C) Checking other group's works. This requires us to try to understand their job. 
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+Personal goals of mine this week is to stay in touch with the Analyzer Group 1 that I was assigned to as a data curator and try keep up with what they've been working on. As the Reproducibility Team, in order to do our job, everybody not only needs to be doing their's, but they also need to be uploading everything to their Repository for us to see it. We need maximum transparency between the groups. 

2013-11-3.md

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+1. Going to office hours yesterday really helped me gain some insight more into the structure of our class project and what the future plans were. I'm pretty happy with my new group too because I feel like we're getting a lot of stuff done. In addition, I learned more about the resource of StackOverflow, which I always knew existed but didn't understand how it worked. Although I'm really glad I learned more about it in the end, I wish these resources were given to us in the beginning of the class. Something that would be great to have is a class website with a list of good resources (in this case would be the class repository). In addition, arriving 30 minutes late on Thursday really set me behind on what was going on, so I'm definitely going to getting to class earlier and on time. 
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+2. While I really like the collaboration of this project, I'm a little concerned of the way we're partitioning parts. There are times when I feel like it's hard to contribute because one person went ahead and did most of the work needed to be done. Usually I like projects where I get to work from beginning to end, but at the same time, I think this type of project is also good for me to experience because this is how most of the real projects going on are being done. Through collaborative effort. Anyway, concerns I have, is how much I can contribute. I feel horrible when I haven't done anything and as data curators, it's always difficult to do it as a group of even 4-5 people. 

2013-11-7.md

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+1. Personal Goals: Lately I've gotten some clarity into what I want to try to pursue. The more we work with the Earthquake data and collaborate, the more I've begun to learn how much interest I have in data science and computer science. My personal goals have been to explore this new interest and read through the "Python for Data Analysis" book. I'm going to look at career opportunities regarding data. Just yesterday I also checked out the D-Lab down in Barrows Hall to explore other resources around campus. 
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+2. While I'm excited on what we're going to pursue next, I'm a little worried about joining a new groups even though it's something all the data curators decided to do. I get really anxious when I can't contribute so I'm hoping that I can find my niche somewhere in this new group. 
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+3. It seems like students have been making and writing a lot of really useful documents and outlines for our class, but it takes a lot of digging to figure out where these documents are (mostly scattered around different repositories). It seems most useful if we had it all in one place, specifically the Stat 157 repository. I know Laura Cunningham has some really awesome .md files on the class structure and a list of the different groups and their S.M.A.R.T goals.