LIEW WEI XIAN's Reflection
This is the second PSDA project given to us and it is an individual task this time. We were allowed to choose our own topics and datasets, which have to be a secondary data, that will be used for inferential statistics during this project. We were given more freedom and control in this project but at the same time us, the student will have to take more aspects into consideration throughout the whole project.
First of all, the choosing of the dataset. The dataset (Statistik Jenayah Malaysia 2019) that I’m using for this project right now is not my first choice, in fact this is the third dataset that I chose. Before anything else, I make sure I take a glance at the lesson slides and look online to understand more about inferential statistics and how each test should be done to avoid unnecessary mistakes as much as possible. At first I was overwhelmed by all those interesting datasets that can be found online, but when I took a closer look I found that those datasets didn’t fulfill all the requirements for this project and the common issues among those dataset are either too organise with limited data I can make use of or the other way around where it doesn’t have enough information or data that I can done the test with in this project. Finally I settle down with these datasets which I find interesting and at the same time there are plenty of data I can make use of. Also by the time when I really get into doing all those tests, I have also made several changes and selection of test to be done as I found that some task I proposed earlier are not suitable to be tested.
Regarding the coding, since this is not the first time anymore using R studio as I have been comfortable using R during the first project. Hence the coding for testing this time is fairly easy. R is indeed a very convenient open source language for statistics as it has a lot of packages and a huge community which ease up all the jobs. Still, this project gives me an opportunity to use R once again and learn more about it as I usually just code in C++.
In brief, I have benefited a lot from this project, and it once again proves that we feel things differently than we usually do when we really get into doing it ourselves. We really need to have a firm understanding about what the whole testing is about in order to pick the right data for the right test. This definitely an effective way other than conducting an examination on those topics, even I personally this is a better way of examination to see the understanding of students regarding those knowledge. Lastly, I would like to take this opportunity to thank my lecturer, Dr. Suhaila Mohamad Yusuf for all her guidance and patience throughout not only this project, but this whole semester.
What have we done
In Project 1, we were given a task from our lecturer to study on descriptive statistics where we summarized the data using tools like graphs and table and statistics such as the mean and standard deviation. We decided to collect the data for ourselves in this case study (primary data) by giving out survey in Google Form. The focus of our study is the hygiene awareness among the UTM students. The reason why we decided to do a study on this topic is due to the outbreak of COVID-19, something that is happening around us currently, so that we can get the best result and feedback from our respondents. The purpose of this study is to look at how much does a person take care of their personal hygiene in an everyday life including during a pandemic situation and to get an insight about the cautiousness and concern of UTM students about global issues that is happening currently. This study takes into the account of how frequent they wash their hands, what precaution they take and how frequent they do it on avoiding transmitting germs.
What have I learned
Throughout the project, we get to apply the knowledge we learn during our lecturer in real life, we have to take into account of what is the data type we wish to produce from the questions we asked like nominal data, ratio data etc. I personally really like this kind of project as we get to know where and how to apply the knowledge we learnt. Besides, I also get to learn something completely new to me which is a programming language used in data science, which is R. The data are visualized in to graph and table using R studio. Coding in R wasn’t something that is tough; it just takes times to learn. There are many interesting and convenient packages available in R which can help to enhance the graph and make the coding process easier. One of the packages named ggplot2 cut the most ice for me. Even though it is something that uses R, but it makes itself looks like a completely different language, where I found it was fun to learn about. Besides, data visualization isn’t something simple. We need to consider and decide which graph most suit one data to get the best possible result and display of the data.
What's the flaws
However, our study isn’t as good as we thought it to be. Our Google Form was distributed only through Whatsapp and the respond from the people we distributed isn’t that great. We only get to collect 50 random data and most of them are local first year Faculty of Engineering student. The demography of our respondents isn’t wide and variant, plus the sample size is quite small in my opinion. It might cause the data that we collect to be biased. I also only found out a fallacy in one of the survey question where we asked the respondents about how many sanitizers have them bought so far, where the answer ‘1’ could means 1 small bottle or 1 big bottle of hand sanitizer. I should’ve be more careful when making the survey form question and spread it through a better platform. Those mistakes will be avoided in any of my future case study in order to get the most accurate result out of the data that we collected.
In conclusion, I’m glad that I learnt and gained something throughout the process. This whole project is fun, and gets to learn something that I been passionate in makes it even better.
Video link to my project presentation:
What
Semester 1 is about to end and I have gone through quite a lot throughout the whole period. The university life is packed with assignments, tests, quizzes and stuffs like that. They come one after another and there is no end to it. Yet, there are still times where I got the chance to have some quality me-time and hang out with my friend. University life is quite similar to working life; the different is that the world out there is far more cruel and harsh. Assignment make up a big portion of the thing I have done so far in university, and it is a great experience. Throughout assignment you can really know oneself deeply; their personality and working capability. Work division been done quite wisely for the assignment I involved in (as the leader) to let the team members do what they best at in order to fully showcase their potential and talents. Working with the right people will ease the process and I was lucky because after a few tries and errors I found a team that I can work comfortably with them. And UTM not only focus on hard-skill, they also concern about the soft-skill and this is why all these assignments exist. Video-filming and editing is the skill that I learned after I entered UTM and it also required some of the skills I learned before like Photoshop in some tasks in the assignments.
So What
Course like Technology and Information System is like a preparation for people with no knowledge in the computer science field like me. It’s a good warm up for the upcoming courses that we are going to take because it gives some exposures to us the ‘abouts’ of the course. One thing that cuts the most ice with me is the Design Thinking Project. I have no idea about this before I was introduced to it by my TIS lecturer. Design thinking is basically the process for creative problem solving. It plays a crucial rule in order to produce a product to really help to solve the problems facing by the targeted community. It provides the guidance and steps we can refer to when we are to come up with a solution.
Now What
It has been a pleasure and a fun journey throughout the assignment. The skill I acquired is really useful for me when I am doing the other assignment or maybe can apply it in my jobs and daily life. It gives me a new perspective of thinking and it emphasize on identifying the problem accurately. This world is full of surprises and challenges. Things that we never learn before or lack of understanding will occur out of nowhere. But by using the design thinking’s creative thinking way and the knowledge I have learned, problems can be solved step by step and stage by stage. Identify the core problem, break it down into small pieces and solve it one by one.