Due November 13 (Wednesday) by the end of the day
For this project, you will spend a week or two collecting data about your own life, analyze the data, and then write about your findings.
This is a small-scale, analog version of the kinds of data analytics that companies (Facebook, Amazon, Google, etc) conduct on our data all the time. The purpose is to get you thinking about all of the information that can be gleaned about your life all the time, and what inferences can be made about it.
Directions:
1. Choose what data you want to collect about yourself. It can be something your phone collects automatically (steps per day, app usage via the ScreenTime feature or something similar), or something you notice and write down yourself (like which subway stops you use at approximately which times). It can be anything that is 1) manageable for the scope of the assignment and 2) something you think will be interesting to learn from.
2. Collect/track/save that data for a week or two. Make sure that your dataset is complete (for example, if you’re tracking your subway usage, write down every single time you write the train and don’t miss any).
3. Analyze your data. Think about what it says about you. If you showed someone your data without telling them anything else about you, what assumptions would they make? What are some good educated guesses that could be made about you based on your data (even if these guesses are not accurate). Why?
It may be useful to actually show your data to someone else and ask them what they assume/conclude and why.
4. Write 2 or more pages about your experience, explaining what you chose for your project, a summary of your data, and your analysis.
5. Post your writing to the blog and tag it “Data Collection” and tag it with your name. (You may choose whatever privacy setting you want)
6. Respond to at least two of your classmates with your reactions/observations/thoughts about what they discovered
This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.
The data I chose to collect for myself would be the amount of time I spend on my phone and how much I spend in each category. When the categories were broken down I was really shocked to see how much time I spend on my phone. The results that came up in my time spent were Entertainment 14 hrs 10 minutes, Social Networking 9 hrs 33 minutes, and Games 8 hrs 27 minutes. I actually thought I spent more time on social networking but instead it was my entertainment that I really spent most of my time on.
What this data says is that I spend too much time on my phone. It’s actually very unhealthy. If I were to show someone my data I think they would say that I need to spend more time off of my phone. the data pretty much shows I have no life. Some educated guesses that i believe that could be made is that if my phone were to be taken, I would not be able to adjust to the changes around me. I use my phone for almost everywhere I go and without it I believe I wouldn’t be able to get to places.
After showing my cousins my data, she said I am a typical teenager in this generation and I need to change how much time I spend on my phone. The data also told her that I am very addicted to my phone and should decrease the amount of time I spend on it.
What I wrote about for my data collection project is how much time I spend on my phone everyday. Usually when I use my phone, I don’t really think about the time or how much of my day I spend using it. On my phone, I have had this screen time feature turned on for a very long time but never really paid any attention to the data that was being recorded. For the past week I have been recording the data. I use my phone almost everywhere I go, whether I am at school or out with friends. Usually if I am bored or just have free time, I use my phone.
After looking at the data that was recorded, I was really surprised at how much time I spend on my phone. For last week’s average screen time I’ve spent 6 hours and 31 minutes on my phone. My total screen time for the entire week was 45 hrs and 38 minutes. I spent 14 hours and 10 minutes of my time on Entertainment ( 13 hrs and 22 minutes on YouTube, and 48 minutes on spotify), 9 hours and 33 minutes on Social networking ( 7 hrs and 56 minutes on snapchat, 1 hr and 16 minutes on IMessage, and 20 minutes on FaceTime), and the last category was spent on Games (5 hrs and 24 minutes on Clash Royale, 2 hrs and 50 minutes on Brawl Stars, 11 minutes on City Fighter, and Call Of Duty 1 minute). All of this data was very surprising because I never really noticed the amount of time I spend on my phone.
If I were to show my data to someone I think they would say I am on my phone way too much.An educated guess that could be made based on this data would be people would say that I am addicted to my phone. I can say this guess is accurate because of the data that was recorded just this week. I am pretty sure if I were to see the same numbers on another persons phone my reaction would be the same, however the age of the person might play a role. I think the people that are around my age or younger would have the same results but those that are older will not.
Overall, after seeking the data that I collected, I know that I should probably spend less time on my phone. In general I think having my phone around is very distracting.