#dissertation journey

[strengthandshield]

Proof of life photo since I haven’t posted in ages. Still here, doing lots of lurking just not much posting. Dissertation is kicking my ass, but at least this week I get to have an ocean view while I write.

[puspitads]

D-Journey: The first three meeting

Lesson Learned so far:

Look at the questionnaire first and examine the design. If you have the questionnaire for the data that you’re going to analyse, read and examine it carefully first before jumping straight into exploring the data. Identify whether there are flaws in the questionnaire design, whether it is prone for careless / mischievous responding, inconsistencies, or missing data.  

The importance of understanding overall data structure. How are multiple-response questions stored? What can be the primary key or any other identifier? How are the options ordered, does it match with the questionnaire?

The urgency of assessing data quality. How complete, accurate, and consistent the data are? Inconsistent, messy, and noisy data won’t provide accurate result. Hence, the important of identifying any possible data issue that might arise (point 1). Point 2 will help to plan the necessary data transformation for efficient data cleaning later on.   

These first three meetings take me back to the Data Science module I had in Term 1, and even further to the experience I had during working. The 80/20 rule that also applies for data analysis. You could spend up to 80% of your time  cleaning and preparing a ready-to-use data before actually doing a proper data analysis and reporting. We are often tempted to dive into analysis straight away to discover result. But the thing is, primary data collected from survey could be really messy and noisy. And analysis conducted on such data would only give incorrect and misleading result. So yeah, gotta work on the cleaning first.

Despite the progress is not as fast, thankfully still manage to uncover some intriguing findings that I can put on my report. I also really love that I could learn a lot about social issue and phenomena in here that I wouldn’t get had I got another topic or supervisor. Thanking myself for the willingness to comb through the data carefully. Let’s do better for the coding and visualisation later on! Let’s be more discipline! 

Hopefully can remain grateful, motivated, and determined throughout this journey. 

---

Leeds, 15 June 2023

[puspitads]

The End, The Beginning

Akhir akhir ini semakin sering menghitung hari, dan semakin dihitung semakin cepat rasanya waktu berlalu. Sadar ngga sadar, 2 term sudah berlalu. Masa perkuliahan, assignment, dan exam udah selesai, tinggal nunggu nilai yang semoga memuaskan (Aamiiin). 

Apakah mudah? Alhamdulillah merasa banyak diberi kemudahan, tapi ngga smooth sailing banget juga. Kalau lagi selow ya sempet jalan-jalan, sempet join SJSM dan Votes, sempet coba berbagai resep baru. Kalau lagi mau exam atau ada banyak deadline, ya banyak begadang dan fast food. Semoga nanti sempat menuliskan apa apa yang berkesan, buat apresiasi diri kalau udah berjuang dan buat pengingat apa yang bisa diperbaiki kedepannya. Begitu pun, untuk perjalanan yang akan dimulai ini.

So, now that teaching and exam period ended, what’s next? The dreaded yet awaited slash anticipated dissertation journey. The dreaded karena jujur dulu pas mau kuliah lagi dan ambil jurusan ini paling ‘takut’ sama tesisnya (*Dissertation in UK = Thesis in Indo). Inget banget dulu S1 paling stress dan pusing ya pas ngoding buat skripsi. Tapi excited juga karena emang biasanya paling banyak belajar hal baru ya pas ngerjain final project ini. 

Dan akhirnya, setelah pilih topik di bulan Maret, pengumuman topik dan supervisor di awal Mei, exam dan final assignment week di akhir Mei, perjalanan ini akan resmi dimulai. Beberapa minggu lalu pertama kali ketemu supervisor(s) dan temen sebimbingan. Kita perkenalan singkat trus di-briefing terkait project-nya dan ngobrolin topik terkait. Kesan pertama seru dan menyenangkan, baik supervisorsnya maupun project dan topiknya. Semoga kedepannya pun demikian. Bismillah, let’s do this! Semoga selalu dimudahkan dan dilancarkan. 

--- Leeds, 11 Juni 2023