This is the first ever blog-sentence I have written….

…now that that’s out of the way, time to get real! Before actually Googling about the different types of research methods I never really though research methods being used anywhere else but in science classes. However, I feel like even without knowing I’ve utilized these methods without even thinking about. While most of the research I’ve done up to this point has been done for various science classes, I now realize I’ve used research methods in almost every class, from English to art. The research methods I would like to learn would be correlation analysis and meta-analysis. I have always been interested in finding patterns/relationships, and having a deeper understanding of what constitutes a viable correlation and finding those relationships would interest me. Meta-analyses are also interesting because they focus on studying work already done and coming with a final result. Depending on the topic, I feel like meta-analyses can be extremely useful when trying to understand discrepancies in similar studies.

Big data and statistics is something that has been becoming ever more interesting to me as I progress further in my computer science degree. While these are major topics in the computer science field, there is also a lot focus in digital humanities. While it is very important to be able to read the data and compile it into meaningful information, there is sometimes disconnect between what data is relevant. Utilizing digital humanity techniques to rationalize the data could make for more efficient algorithms that could give a clearer picture of the vast amounts of data we receive.

Especially with the unlimited amount of resources we have on the web, I think the one most important digital literacy skill is to have a strong sense of judgement. Being able to master this skill allows for a high level of confidence in the information found online and also increases the accuracy and reliability of any research I do. Rather than gathering all my information from one source, developing skills in appropriation would allow me to validate the information I find with other sources and may also allow me to find new materials that may be possibly missing from the original source.