Serendip is an independent site partnering with faculty at multiple colleges and universities around the world. Happy exploring!

Reply to comment

Anne Dalke's picture

Week 8a: Interpreting Our Data

By 5 p.m. on Monday, October 26th (note extension!)
post here a one-paragraph interpretation of the results of your survey.
Support your interpretation with a graph of your respondents' answers to ONE (only one!) of your questions.

"Thinking about How You Think"
Find 5 subjects (doesn't matter who: hallmates, old high school friends, your parents....)
Ask each one of them to
1) Name a favorite musical artist.
2) List 5 attributes that you like about the artist's work.
3) Go to http://www.pandora.com/ and select this artist
(in the unlikely case that this artist is not in the archive,
you'll have to repeat questions 1-2 w/ another one).
4) Listen to the first 5 songs that Pandora "thinks" you'll like;
don't skip, listen to the whole song; don't do "thumbs up or down."
5) Did you like each of the songs Pandora chose? Rank each of those
selections from a scale of 1 (complete disagreement) to 5
(complete agreement with your preferences).
6) Look @ the reasons Pandora gives for selecting each of these songs:
on the same 1-5 scale (from complete disagreement to complete agreement),
how well do the musical elements Pandora identifies correspond with those you listed in #2 above?
7) On the same 1-5 scale: what's your reaction to the possibility that
this company might be able to write an algorithm that predicts
your musical taste? (from 1, most negative to 5, most positive)?


Reply

To prevent automated spam submissions leave this field empty.
8 + 4 =
Solve this simple math problem and enter the result. E.g. for 1+3, enter 4.