BIOL398-03/S13:Class Journal Week 9

Reflection

Laura Terada Week 3 Journal

Laura Terada

Reflection

1. What aspect of this assignment came most easily to you?
   • Doing the basic excel functions came the easiest to me (ex: average, stdev).
2. What aspect of this assignment was the most challenging for you?
   • The most challenging part was in the sanity check section where we had to use all the filters, since I have never used that feature before.
3. What (yet) do you not understand?
   • Nothing- the assignment was pretty straightforward!
4. Does "crunching" the data yourself help you to understand microarray experiments better? Why or why not?
   • It doesn't help me to understand the experiment better, but it also doesn't NOT help me. I understood microarray experiments before this assignment; however, I suppose this helps me in developing the skills needed to deal with raw data.

Laura Terada 14:20, 2 April 2013 (EDT)

Kevin McKay

1. None of it came easily for me.
2. Using excel is hard for me and was very time consuming with the tediousness of this assignment,.
3. I need to review the statistics material, I had stats last semester but have apparently not retained much of what I learned.
4. No, I could have gained the same knowledghe I did during this assignment seeing a worksheet with everything already performed, doing this just took a lot of time.

Kevin Matthew McKay 15:10, 2 April 2013 (EDT)

Kasey E. O'Connor Week 3 Journal

Kasey E. O'Connor

Reflection

1. What aspect of this assignment came most easily to you?
   • Sorting all the data and filtering came the easiest to me.
2. What aspect of this assignment was the most challenging for you?
   • The most challenging part of the assignment was keeping all the columns straight because there were so many. Making sure that I was using the correct column and row for each equation got a little confusing with all of the data.
3. What (yet) do you not understand?
   • There is nothing that I did not understand, it was a very easy assignment to follow because it was laid out so well.
4. Does "crunching" the data yourself help you to understand microarray experiments better? Why or why not?
   • Looking at and analyzing the data definitely helped me to understand it more. I was having a hard time trying to figure out how the data was normalized, so going through the process cleared that up. I am also a big number person, so this was a good assignment for me.

Kasey E. O'Connor 18:08, 2 April 2013 (EDT)

James P. McDonald Week 9 Journal

James P. McDonald

1. What aspect of this assignment came most easily to you?
   • Finding the averages and standard deviations of the data using the excel formulas came the easiest to me.
2. What aspect of this assignment was the most challenging for you?
   • Using the filtering function for the sanity check was challenging at first because it was the first time I had ever used it.
3. What (yet) do you not understand?
   • There was no part of this assignment that I did not understand because the instructions were straightforward.
4. Does "crunching" the data yourself help you to understand microarray experiments better? Why or why not?
   • I was initially unsure how the massive amounts produced by microarrays were analyzed but I now understand how this data can be organized efficiently.

James P. McDonald 21:02, 2 April 2013 (EDT)

Helena M. Olivieri Week 9 Journal

Helena M. Olivieri

1. What aspect of this assignment came most easily to you?
   • The simple statistical analysis came the most easily.
2. What aspect of this assignment was the most challenging for you?
   • If you don't keep the data organized and stay focused, it becomes very easy to make a simple mistake. So I suppose, staying engaged in the number "crunching" can be a little challenging.
3. What (yet) do you not understand?
   • How we are going to analyze and compare our data when looking at more than one microarray data set.
4. Does "crunching" the data yourself help you to understand microarray experiments better? Why or why not?
   • So far, "crunching" the data has been a good hands on way to understand microarray experiments and data. But, the work is very tedious and after a while it becomes a little difficult not to become somewhat robotic.

Helena M. Olivieri 21:32, 2 April 2013 (EDT)

Matthew E. Jurek Week 9

Matthew E. Jurek

1. What aspect of this assignment came most easily to you?
   • I found that the basic Excel functions came most easily to me. Taking averages and creating the basic formulas within Excel wasn't too difficult.
2. What aspect of this assignment was the most challenging for you?
   • The hardest part was working with such a large spreadsheet. I've never worked with a sheet this large. It was easy to lose my place or mix up columns. Working with such a wide array of data was challenging at times.
3. What (yet) do you not understand?
   • I'm not sure I did the Bonferroni correction properly. Following the correction, I had zero p values that were less then .05 across all time points. Based on the questions following the correction I feel that's wrong. I checked my work a few times and still found zero p values in that range. I understand what the correction is geared towards, but I'm not sure it worked properly on my spreadsheet.
4. Does "crunching" the data yourself help you to understand microarray experiments better? Why or why not?
   • It appears a majority of the experiment is "crunching" numbers on a spreadsheet. Seeing that I just did this crunching, I would say I've done a majority of the experiment. Since these experiments are so data intensive, I feel I have a better understanding.

• Matthew E. Jurek 22:47, 2 April 2013 (EDT):