Left Brain v Right Brain

I got 100% left brain on the quiz we took. I think that for a 13 question quiz the questions were acceptable, but like others in the class mentioned it was clear which answers lined up to which ratio of brain sides. This made it hard to take the test without having a predetermined result in mind and therefore a bias to certain answers. I think that Myers-Briggs test are more accurate because they ask a wider range of questions and have more solutions than just left or right brained. I am actually an ENTJ (extroverted, intuition, thinking, judgment) which offers more description and therefore a better assessment of my overall personality.

Data Collection

What is data? How is data collected? What can be learned from the data that can be collected?

• Data is any piece of information that can be represented in bits. Data can range form a number to a set of characters. Collecting data can come from a survey or a sampling of people, it can be collected through calculations. Many social findings or economic theories have been derived from data and other things like advertising markets use data to provide their services.

• Develop a hypothesis about student behavior over time, based on a small sample of data.
• Describe sources of data appropriate for performing computations.

“People say there is data all around us. What do you think that means? Brainstorm as many examples of data as you can think of.                                                                                                                                      

• Who is generating the data?
• Where is the data being stored or saved? Who owns it?

Blown to Bits ch. 3 reflection (hw oct 14 and oct 17)

• Do you think the need for file compression will always be needed, considering the advances in data storage, the speed of computers, and speed of the Internet?
• Yes, because while there is an every growing improvement in technology there is also going to be a large increase in users on the internet. The challenge is going to be maintaining enough servers and connectivity to be able to keep internet fast and reliable for everyone. I think that a part of that is compressing files to keep them small and traffic fast.
• Data formats are constantly changing. What challenges does this present for historians? For a given document, movie, or audio file, what are all the component pieces that need to be preserved along with it?
• VCR is not even in the distant past yet it is nearly impossible to find a VCR player. Not to mention if a song is on a cassette tape, forget about finding a player. This old technology and the progression of modern technology make it hard for historians to uncover old artifacts since they might lack the supporting components to view the artifacts. They basically need to preserve one of everything to ensure that there is something to view old technology on. 
• There is concern about Microsoft’s de-facto “.doc” format. Do similar concerns exist for cloud services such as Cloud Data formats and Cloud APIs? What are some such APIs and what will the dangers be if those de-facto standards are adopted?
• No I do not think that Cloud Data formats will be a big deal or share the same concerns mainly because data formats often automatically adjust or offer other methods to access documents, so for an average person it doesn't effect their lives. More than that though it is hard to transfer government files to cloud data formats and that might be a concern for the future. 

Lossy Compression Reflection

• What is happening in the app?
• It is compressing the data without a dictionary, it is just dropping vowels. 
• Should this “count” as text compression? Why or why not?
• Yes, they make the files smaller and still result in the same or a similar result when you receive them. The one difference is in lossy compression where the resulting image or file is compressed but unable to recover to the original state. However, if it is useless information that doesnt make a difference then I think it still counts as compression. 
• What do you think “lossy” refers to?
• Lossy refers to a compression method where parts of the file is lost hence loss(y) compression. 

Oct 14 reflection

• How many bits (or bytes) are required to encode an image that is 25 pixels wide and 50 pixels tall, if you encode it with 24 bits per pixel?
• 3753 Bytes or 30,024 bits
• Imagine that you have an image that is too dark or too bright. Describe how you would alter the RGB settings to brighten or darken it. Give an example.
• Change the RGB code from something like (200, 188, 210) to the same ratio but half the numbers to make it darker (100, 144, 110).
• If you had to send your favicon using the sending bits widget, it would probably take a long time. Could you compress your image? How? Describe in broad strokes the kinds of things you could do.
• Yes I could make a character represent each color pixel and send all the blue pixels as one character and such. Then send the dictionary also. This works better if you use one color multiple times.

Oct 13 Reflection

• In the previous lesson we came up with a simple encoding scheme for B&W images. What if we wanted to have color?
• In the previous activity we could use binary to create images because it was a collection of 1/0s or black/whites. In this way we could create images in black and white by making the shape of the image in black and white squares. To make color I think that you would have to define the height and width first then define color of the next x pixels then give the 1/0 code of it and then change over to another color by indicating the next color. Not exactly sure about it though.
• Devise an encoding scheme for color in an image file. How would you represent color for each pixel?
• For example 1111 might be Blue and so give the height and width then type 1111 for the next set of pixels to be blue. 
• How many different colors could you represent? Do you have a particular order to the colors?
• no particular order of colors but technically by assigning a number to a color you can represent any color. 
• What are some of the difficulties of representing color?
• The color could be confused for the actually picture code and or vice versa leaving certain parts out or shifting the rest of the code down changing the entire picture. 

Text Compression Reflection

What made compressing text hard to do?

Choosing phrases or words that are ideal to compress, basically finding the most effective compression dictionary. Also, decompressing the text was slightly a headache if there were many characters and not man words in the compressed text.

Describe the thinking process you used in solving this challenge - what was your strategy for compressing the test.

Take common words or phrases that appear often in a text file and replace them with one character like a sun or an umbrella. There is a corresponding dictionary or key that has the character and what words or phrases they replaced. To decompress the text just use the dictionary to replace the characters with the phrases stated in the dictionary to get the original text. Could be related in texting, typing u when meaning you.

Do you think it's possible to describe or write a specific set of instructions that a person could follow that would always result in better text compression than your heuristic?

No, my heuristic gives the most reasonable and realistic compression for a given text. I cannot give a better answer once for a given text let alone always.

Is there a way to know that a compressed piece of text is compressed the most possible?

No, I think that there are too many ways to compress a document to determine it by hand or without a computer, however, there might be a program that could test all dictionary possibilities to find the best compression rates.

If you send the compressed poem would your friend be able to read it? Why is the dictionary important?

My friend would only be able to determine the original poem if I sent the dictionary as well because it functions as a key that is used to decode the compressed document to its original form.