[homework] Reading & experience report

[xepektov]

Asking

• [x] Ask ChatGPT for help completing this homework

Feeling, Writing, Thinking

• [x] Post an experience report (a paragraph or several) as a comment on this issue. This experience report should convey what motivates you to understand and practice data thinking. An experience report may describe a collection of experiences (which may or may not relate to data), and some questions to consider may be helpful: What were you or those involved feeling? Doing? Thinking? Asking? Where were they? What systems were involved, if any? Who would you want to better understand the incentives at play?
  • if you are stuck, ask for help on Zulip, come to office hours, make a plan of tasks to do and ask for feedback on the plan
  • try using dictation on iPhone, Android, computer, and ask ChatGPT to summarize it
  • ask Lex for ideas or ChatGPT for ideas
  • edit using https://hemingwayapp.com/, Grammarly, or any other tool to help
  • read the below articles for ideas

Doing

• [x] Review the first class: https://panopto.ut.ee/Panopto/Pages/Sessions/List.aspx?folderID=43bb180c-79a6-4324-b055-afa400ecd1a0 - ask on Zulip if you can't access this
• [x] Review the Figma whiteboard from the first class: https://www.figma.com/file/SsoNLhaZwnSGkADd4eS0D8/230220-introduction?node-id=0%3A1&t=jR2hISrDchAPapYR-1
• [x] Create a LinkedIn profile. (If you are not comfortable using your real name, feel free to use a fake name + email)
• [x] Post your LinkedIn profile on Zulip -- Zulip is open source and enables us to analyze our chat messages with natural language processing tools such as ChatGPT, which we will do later in the course!
• [x] Read https://matt.might.net/articles/how-to-email/ to understand principles of communication over email or Zulip
• [x] Read parts of the Mailchimp Style Guide (https://styleguide.mailchimp.com/voice-and-tone/ or https://styleguide.mailchimp.com/writing-principles/) to understand how written communication can be guided by principles
• [x] Read https://georgesaunders.substack.com/p/on-worry to understand a professional writer's perspective on writing.
• [x] Read https://every.to/chain-of-thought/writing-essays-with-ai-a-guide to understand how to use voice recording, dictation on your smartphone or computer, and ChatGPT, and Lex to help you write
• [x] Read https://simonwillison.net/2022/Dec/5/rust-chatgpt-copilot/ to understand how ChatGPT and CoPilot can help you learn data thinking, programming, and statistics skills
• [x] Read http://web.archive.org/web/20170208134519/http://storyshots.tumblr.com/post/25032057278/22-storybasics-ive-picked-up-in-my-time-at-pixar -- especially the "Once upon a time" story telling framework Pixar used for its movies.
• [x] Read https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/02/13/the-dubious-rise-of-impostor-syndrome to help understand concepts that can increase our psychological safety and trust in class and how asking ChatGPT can help reduce our fear of asking for help when stuck.
• [x] Read https://jaan.io/my-friend-radicalized-this-made-me-rethink-how-i-build-AI/ to learn about my journey in understanding the incentives that can affect our thoughts, feelings, and actions in society and the incentives that affect how AI such as ChatGPT is built.

Programming & Infrastructure

• [x] Create a GitHub Codespace using the data thinking template here (from https://github.com/onefact/datathinking.org-codespace)
• [x] Send a screenshot to Zulip of a plot you made in the GitHub codespace (of any dataset or data you generated as in the live coding demo from the first lecture; ask for help if this is unclear)
• [x] Sign up for Lex - message Jaan on Zulip for an invite code
• [x] Sign up for Figma as a student (https://www.figma.com/education/students/)
• [x] Install copyq on Windows Powershell or Linux using Chocolatey, or install Maccy on Mac using Homebrew. This will save you a lot of time throughout the class as you copy and paste things from ChatGPT!

[xepektov]

Here's my experience report: This is the digital era where the world generates a huge amount of data, but it is all mixed up. Through data thinking I believe, the useful data can be separated out to make different plots and understand what the data means. We use this data to think critically and strategically to make informed decisions. Many organizations already use data thinking to analyze their data to help boost sales and profit. One of the primary benefits of data thinking is that it helps identify patterns and trends that might not be apparent otherwise. One instance when I had used data thinking on a smaller scale was when I had to choose an elective subject for my coursework. I used the grading data from the previous years for the courses I was interested in and chose the one I though was best. This helped a lot; I did not have to go around asking people for advice. I would like to learn more about data thinking as it would enable me to contribute to solving more complex real-life problems which might help a lot of people. I think the ability to decipher information from a big stack of messy data is an achievement in itself.