Remembrance of Research Past

Hello All:

This will be my final blog post for the year. It has been a wonderful journey with many ups and downs over the past two years in Seminar and Research. I have gained many skills and fought through challenges. Even though during the process there were definitely times I was not happy with my choice, looking back on it from the end, it was definitely a worthwhile experience.

Me at the beginning of AP Seminar

At the beginning of Seminar, my writing skills were ok and my argumentation skills were pretty bad, so it was definitely a learning experience for me. I feel like I honed my craft very well over the course of the year and by my last paper, I truly had produced college-level work that I was proud of. The group projects also helped my collaboration skills a lot, since we all had to merge our voices into one coherent paper. I remember during our first group presentation, Kristiana blanked on one of her slides and I just stepped right in to give her some time to get her bearings back. This helped us both learn teamwork as well as how to handle a difficult situation on the fly. It was not always easy; the only time I ever pulled an all-nighter in high school was for Seminar. But afterwards I learned how to better manage my time and balance a heavy workload.

Then came Research...

The whole research process was definitely a learning experience. At the start of research, I was very sure that I wanted to do price anchoring and only that area of behavioral economics would yield a good research project. Pretty soon after, I began reading sources on behavioral influences and social behavior and time pressure... I shifted my focus from price anchoring to gambling and behavioral effects, which actually turned out to be a more interesting area of research for me. Writing a coherent literature review was a struggle at times, especially since the premise of my lit review was that the three effects are currently not comparable. So trying to tie them together was a struggle at first.

Once I got my methods, getting participants was the biggest struggle of the whole research process. I had like 7 participants 2 days before the study, so I just emailed everyone I knew and managed to get 40 people to come.

My critiques on research would be that towards the end of the class, the editing of other people's papers got a little tedious and became a lot of work. So much to the point that I did not have as much time to edit my own paper because I was spending so long on other people's. I think that reducing that to maybe two per week could improve the class. Overall, I am glad that I did AP Research because I feel like it will give me a leg up in college when applying for research positions and it will also help me perform and know what I am doing once I get there.

The two year journey has been crazy. I am now officially retired from AP Research (after blog comments of course)! (527)

The Final Sprint

Hello All:

This is my second to last blog post of the year and my final one before the presentation this Friday. As research nears to an end, there is still so much work to do to make sure we end senior year with a bang and put forth our best foot on presentation day. Though my first presentation was definitely rough, I got some good feedback and am ready to fix it and make the final presentation spectacular.

My main issue with the presentation was lack of urgency and pace, I kind of meandered through the presentation and approached it with a very chill attitude. I think that comes partially from my personality and partially from not knowing my script as well as I will during the actual presentation. Since it took me a moment to remember what I was supposed to say, it may have come off as slow-paced and relaxed. I also tended to repeat myself and attempt to explain things in various ways, so the presentation got a bit circular. I think this is also largely caused by me not knowing my script as well as I should. This can be easily cleared up by my next practice presentation and I will be perfectly fast, clear, and linear during my actual presentation.

In terms of my slides, they started out a little disengaging and I have introduced some animations to help engage my audience more in my slides but I definitely still have some things to fix before my next practice. I have used fading in to allow me to emphasize concepts that I discuss aloud but I need to get more smooth with bringing them in at the right time. One concept that has really worked for me is showing a blackjack table and cards and using those to explain my procedure and the different changes. This has seemed to use a much more visual medium to engage my audience in what I am saying, rather than just showing the words I am saying on the slides. I have tried to expand this concept to the rest of my presentation and use diagrams to illustrate my points and make the audience more engaged with what I am saying.

Hopefully, with more practice and these changes to my slides I will be able to have an engaging and exciting presentation that truly reflects the hard work I have put into my project. As we come down the final stretch, we must sprint to the finish and give a great presentation and it will all be worth it. (431)

Slide Time

Hello All:

This week has been an especially crazy week of emotional ups and downs for the entire senior class. As college decisions came out, I just wanted to say how proud and excited I am for each and every member of the Class of 2017!! From becoming new blue devils to sun devils, cardinal to bears, we killed it!! Anyways, in the world of AP Research, I have still been hard at work on my presentation and slides and am so excited to share my research with the BASIS Scottsdale community.

Ideally, a powerpoint interacts with the presentation and supplements the information being said by the speaker. A great presentation flows seamlessly through the paper in an orderly fashion and does not get too bogged down in every detail included in the paper. A great powerpoint keeps the audience engaged in the presenter's speech by providing visual aids and emphasizing key terms. A presentation should follow a script and the powerpoint should be built in to the script rater than separately. That being said, my presentation definitely fits some of those categories but not all of them. I feel like I use the slides to keep the audience engaged, especially since I added animations and pop ups to go along with exactly what I am saying. I also added some audience participation pieces to my presentation in which I ask the audience to think of numbers and then demonstrate some of the effects briefly. I think I can cut even more of the details out of parts of my presentation, since there are definitely times when I try to explain the nitty gritty to my audience. I also feel like I can still improve a few of the slides by adding more pictures or changing some of the backgrounds. The problem I have had with changing backgrounds is that sometimes the text becomes hard to read, so I will have to find a balance.

Originally, I approached my AP Research presentation very similarly to a Seminar one, but I have now realized that they are very different. In Seminar, we are just explaining and synthesizing others' arguments, so the slides are more minimal to complement the speech. However, in Research, we designed our own methods and got our own methods, so we need to use more dynamic slides to engage the audience in our thinking process as well as keep them focused for a significantly longer presentation.

My plan for practicing the presentation is to record myself numerous times and watch what
I do well and badly. In order to become fluent with the presentation without sounding robotic, I plan to learn the ideas I need to cover as well as key phrases to use rather than a word-for-word script. Since my powerpoint has many animations, I will be able to stay on track by pairing key phrases with animation sequences and clicks, so I can keep up with the slides without sounding so unnatural. Recording myself will help me see awkward things I do with my body and hands and gain the perspective of my audience while practicing. I am really excited to do present my findings and hopefully will perfect everything in the next week or so!! (540)

Presentation Time

Hello All:

The end of the year is getting so close!! It's so exciting but also so scary. Our papers are nearing their final stages and our presentations are beginning to take shape. As we move on to the presentations, it is extremely important to understand the rubric and how my script and slides fall into it right now. One thing I will say is that I think I went way overboard with the script and had a lot of trouble cutting out all of the information from my paper. I have grown so near to every word in my paper that it is painstaking for me to take out one of my babies (I mean ideas) from the presentation. Hopefully you guys can reign me in and help me condense my paper into true presentation form. It will not be an easy ask but I am excited to get it done.

I think I do a really good job of completing the first two rubric rows. It may be overly long-winded and over the top but it definitely still gets the job done. I discuss the research design fully and explain every step of my experiment and how it relates to my research question. At the end of the presentation I also bring it all back together and discuss my findings in relation to the prior literature, connecting claims and bringing the argument of my research full circle. I also think I identify the consequences and limitations of the research clearly (but not concisely), completing row two of the rubric.

Rubric row three was something I do not think I have put enough of into the script. Although I did state my hypothesis after my research question, I never fully and explicitly articulate how the findings caused my own personal growth and opinions to change. I definitely explain how the research relates to the prior literature that I explained, but I do not really relate that to my hypothesis directly as much as I probably should.

For rubric row four, I feel like I have pretty engaging and easy to follow slides, but how I score on the rubric will depend on my delivery of the presentation. I'm sure that with practice I will be able to engage the audience and deliver a great presentation.

Hopefully this week I will condense my script and be on my way to a great presentation!! (403)

Refine Refine Refine

Hello All:

I want to start this blog post with a moment of silence for my bracket. With Duke's loss, I am officially done for.

Anyways, after a great week of commenting on each other's papers and reviewing my results section with Mrs. Haag, I think my paper is getting to a really great place. Shoutout to Kristiana, Grace, and Sunskruthi for taking the time to read my paper and comment thoroughly; I really appreciate the feedback.

After reading their comments as well as reading my paper over again, I realized a few weak spots that needed to be fixed in my paper. Transitions were somewhat of an issue for me throughout. Many of my transitions sounded very formulaic and robotic and did not really guide the reader through the flow of my paper. In a few sections, I used the subtopic break a s a crutch to transition without really transitioning and explaining myself. In order to fix that, I need to reword a few transitions to sound more natural and add a few transitions in places that are currently lacking.

I tended to repeat myself and redefine some terms numerous times, which cost me a lot of words. Especially this occurred about the SOEP survey, which I mentioned three different times and justified it each time. In order to fix that I will try and cut out unnecessary explanation, which will also help me cut some words.

I also found that my results section, especially the statistical significance was lacking and confusing. Last week at my meeting, Mrs. Haag and I talked about changing the benchmark from risk-neutral to no risk, so that my calculations and graphs can be more easily understood. I am trying that along with the risk-neutral format to see which one works better in the paper. Hopefully by fixing the graphs, which will not change the actual results (only the numbers will be a little different), I can make that section clearer and bolster my paper.

In terms of the AP rubric, I think I have achieved the middle mark for all sections for sure. I think changing my graphs to help improve my statistical analysis and results section will allow me to get full marks in 5, 6, and 7, which deals with the results section and the graphs. I also think the inclusion of the table outlining the procedural changes will help me score higher for the figures and charts as well as the methods section, since it makes my methods clear and easily replicable. The one place I think I am lacking is that my voice needs to always be distinguishable from the sources'. Though for the most part I am distinct, there are a few spots that I use extended quotes, so I need to fix that in order to score the highest. I'm excited to keep making my paper better and to help my peers with their papers this week. Thanks for reading my post!! Here's Patrick to tell a classic Max-story. (503)