This week, my focus transitioned from research to the final deliverables. Things are starting to come together; after a few more iterations, I think we will have some nice materials to present.
Both of my mentors moved to Texas this week. I am sad that they left, but thankful for the time they gave me while they were here. We will continue to work with them over the next few weeks while finishing up the project.
Goals
- Re-work the paper.
- I made a lot of changes to the Abstract, Background, and Methods sections. The Introduction, Related Work, Findings, and Discussion sections still need a lot of work, though.
- Get poster ideas.
Weekend
This weekend was very full. On Saturday, Dr. Natarajan had a party to mark the “end of an era” since two of his students graduated and his whole lab is moving to Texas. I got to the party at 11 a.m. and didn’t get back to the dorms until nearly 8 p.m. We all ate lunch, played laser tag, and got ice cream together (picture). It was fun listening to people reminisce.
On Sunday morning, Tom brought Mina, Megan, Disaiah, and I to his church (picture). Life Church (picture) seemed like it had a really great community. After the service, they even had a potluck (picture).
In the afternoon, Julia and I drove people to Nashville, IN to wander around and look at all of the artsy shops (picture). We then went to Brown County State Park to climb the Fire Tower and hike (picture, picture). All in all, it was a very fun day!
Monday
This morning, all of the ProHealth REU students helped teach Girl Scout Campers how to make light-up cards using paper circuits. It was a lot of fun since we got to work one-on-one with the campers. One girl told me that she wanted to be a chiropractor, but this camp was making her want to
In the early afternoon, I finished up the big table of scores Dr. Natarjan wanted. The table can be viewed here. None of the scores are very impressive and the Oversampling & SMOTE methods overfit the data.
Rob worked on the Reviewer Response Table, which can be viewed here.
Tuesday
I spent all morning working on the Abstract, Background, and Methods sections of our research paper. All of these sections now sound a lot better, but there is a long way to go before the paper as a whole is presentable.
Nandini met me for coffee around lunch time. It was nice just being able to talk to her about life rather than work. I learned a lot about her, and I wish we had gotten coffee sooner.
My afternoon was mainly spent reading up on Knowledge Discovery in Databases. Since our findings are centered on discovering knowledge from Bayesian Networks, we need to explain the purpose and procedure of knowledge discovery in our own paper.
Wednesday
This morning, I continued to work on re-writing the paper and reading up on Knowledge Discovery. When Nandini came by, we gave her what we had done so that she could give us some feedback. She is leaving for Texas tomorrow (picture); I will really miss her!
Our Wednesday Workshop this week was a critique on our posters. Rob had been playing around with colors and fonts for our poster this week. His work can be seen here. During the workshop, Fernando showed us some of his Master student’s poster designs. These posters inspired me and I made a rough frame for the poster, which can be viewed here.
Thursday
Rob and I met Nandini for the last time today. She gave us some edits for the paper and told us that she would look at it again once the Findings and Discussion sections are complete. I continued to work on the paper in the afternoon. I think it is starting to look like a real paper!
Rob worked on the video today. The outline for the final video can be viewed here.
Friday
Today was Gabi’s birthday! Max and I went to party city last night, so we went all-out in decorating her desk (picture). Birthday preparation is starting to be something I really love.
After the meeting, I worked more on the poster. Taking inspiration from Mina and Anne’s poster, I decided to create a diagram for the methods section. You can view this iteration here.
A big group of us went to see Baby Driver tonight. I really liked it. It looks like a Fast and Furious movie directed by Wes Anderson, with a little Reservoir Dogs sprinkled in for good measure.
Unknown Animal of the Week: Eastern Long-Necked Turtle
This Austrailian turtle folds its neck in sideways rather than retracting it vertically, as most North American turtles do. When threatened, this turtle gives off a strong odor to deter predators.
