CSS Assignment Wednesday, April 26 On Campus

Considerations:

  • The most difficult aspect of crime analysis is connecting theory and data.
  • You might find it difficult to find any clear examples of any researchers in any field at CSS describing a meaningful connection between theory and data.
  • Why is this so rare/difficult?

8 thoughts on “CSS Assignment Wednesday, April 26 On Campus”

  1. Most researchers tend to present on their findings only, I feel that most people giving a presentation assume that the members of the audience already know the theory or theories the presenter is discussing. For example, I watched a speaker today only discuss what they had found during their research, they didn’t go into any background of what was thought prior and how it related to their project. The biggest problem I feel like is presenters get into a rush because of nerves and time constraints, I myself am guilty of that when I’m presenting. However, there is a difference between talking about your findings and connecting prior ideas and theories to your information. I feel like in order for an audience to understand what you are presenting you need to take the time and briefly describe any theory that relates to how you conducted your research and how it either proves or disproves your original idea. In my opinion, the reason people struggle so much with this is simply because they assume the audience knows too much about their topic and deems the background information unnecessary.

  2. Tanner Carroll
    Wednesday, April 26, 2017

    Why is it so hard to connect theory and data?

    A theory is a set of assumptions, propositions, or accepted facts that lead to a possible explanation of relationships. There are thousands upon thousand of theories out there covering everything we could possibly think of, many of which correspond with each other. However, data is collected using specific methods for a purpose using controlled conditions. Data is what we rely upon to make assumptions and conclusions on in an experiment. Relating a theory to data can be tricky because of the simple fact that theories can include several factors, some in which may not incorporate the data that is acquired in the lab or the studies you have conducted. This leads to scrambling and trying to find a theory that your data set may fall under to relate to in a talk/presentation. Ultimately, the data set that is acquired in your studies could possibly fall under several possible theories and a best fit decision would have to be made on what theory to relate to.

  3. I sat threw 4 presenters from the hauldmen center after school program. My first thought was the effort the put behind the program even thou they receive a average of 15 kids a day. These children are allotted experiences with agriculture, music arts and crafts, and sports fitness. There presentations were all pretty good after they got threw the technique difficulties they used a combination of video and power point to stress the importance of this program and the effect on the community it has. The coolest thing I heard was about there funding. That they receive some funding from drug prevention grants and I thought that was unique and a great way to find the money at all cost to give these kids extra experiences in life.

  4. After sitting through three different presentations. I found that at first the presenters seemed to be a little nervous at first which is expected but once they got going I could see confidence and their hard work they put into their research. The first two presenters used a popular program called SPSS. one individual used A program called ruby, which is a mathematical program from my understanding. I would have to say it was difficult to tie in a theory to data but that could be do to the presentations that I watched. I actually enjoyed sitting down and listing to them talk about the amount of work and passion put into their work. Many of the presenters has put over a year of work in. My favorite one is there was a presentation on a card trick and how it is done using mathematics and the data program ruby. He used the software to find out the probability of the chances he would draw a certain amount of cards and came up with a formula to help better explain do to their being a great amount of number on the program. -Todd Blackburn

  5. overall I sat through a few presentations and while they were all good, none of them really went into detail about the theories their projects dealt with and focused mainly on the results of their data. this is largely the result of the presentations being geared towards people that have a decent understanding of the field their in but it is also because most of the people that presented are inexperienced and are nervous, thus their more focused on showing and explaining their data than give background info

  6. I saw a few presentations but I decided to score one related to my major , which was criminology. It was done by two of my peers in class, they were McKenzie and Joshua. Their presentation was on association between law enforcement and media portrayals. The most difficult aspect of crime analysis is connecting theory and data. McKenzie and Joshua had their data collected in classes here at the university. They also went around campus asking others on their view of law enforcement and the media. they had 185 respondents and the majority were between the ages of 17 and 21. It made sense because students are in that range of age. this already made there data a little bias because their sample was collected only in the rowan county area. The benefit was that it would give us a close result of what people on campus think of law enforcement. this does not really show the overall view of what people in the country think about law enforcement and the media portrayal because their survey was only seen inside of Kentucky. This meant the connection between theory and data was not well placed because it lacks more surveys and information. What made it so difficult was that it would be hard for them to go out of Kentucky to get more respondents to get a wider view between law enforcement and media portrayals.

  7. As I watched a few of the scientific oral presentations, I noticed that many students projects were continuations of previous students; this is probably because many scientific research projects can’t be completed in a semesters time. Most of these presentations were students senior thesis’. It seems as everyone used some variation of scientific theory in their research, which is slightly different from crime theory. Relating a theory to data can be hard because theories can include several factors, some in which may not incorporate the data that is acquired in the lab or the studies one has conducted.

  8. It seems some people have a hard time connecting data and theory. My person from the CSS assignment used a theory however he did not explain what theory he used. I believe it had to do something with how the supernova he was using was very old and by using X-rays of the sky he was able to try and determine that. Like I mentioned before he didn’t really explain what it was however he did have lots of data on his subject of choice. And even though this post had nothing to do with my major I actually somewhat understood some of it because of my intro Astronomy class I was in this semester.

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