[academia] small good-natured whinge

[kaberett]

I had an excellent productive meeting with my supervisor and some collaborators today... and in consequence have to sort through another five hundred data points (from twenty-one publications) to work out which I can ignore versus which I have to actually provide an explanation for (and also do some other manipulation of).

Whinge whinge whinge. :-p

(I'd expected to be able to dismiss them all out of hand, but actually they do more-or-less what I'd expect in the least convenient way possible, such that I abruptly need to get to grips with the entire Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt.)

Comments

[jesse_the_k]

Any chance of hands-on gripping? Looks like the weather would be a marked improvement over your home location.

[kaberett]

Ha! No. :-) Just processing other people's already-obtained data...

[redbird]

Having read just the first few paragraphs there, that looks like a complicated, and I hope interesting, thing.

[kaberett]

I specifically care about the chemical differences between the intraplate- and classic subduction-style lavas, and thankfully don't actually have to engage directly with Why They're Like That! But I am going to have to do a bunch of data sanitisation, because my element of interest has typically been an analytic afterthought and as such I need to go through everything carefully and manually to decide what I trust and how large I consider the uncertainties to be...

[silveradept]

That sounds like maths rather than having to do more samples and dealing with all of those things in lab again. Which doesn't necessarily make it easier or better, just that it's maths.

[kaberett]

I enjoy sample-wrangling! Whereas this requires the executive function to track down 21 different papers, assess the data quality for my element of interest, exclude samples as appropriate, and *then* start actually *manipulating* them according to parameters of interest...

[silveradept]

That does not sound fun for anyone who doesn't get really thrilled about statistics and data manipulation.

[kaberett]

I have been avoiding statistics as much as possible since A-levels back in 2008, so... >_>

[silveradept]

And there we have it. Something about being able to pawn it off on the graduate students, except of course…

[davidgillon]

I'm not certain coming away with more work rather than less is what most of us would call productive ;)

[kaberett]

The reward for a job well done...!

[vass]

That seems like Many Data Point.

[kaberett]

SO MANY. And I am grimly resigning myself to having to do the Andean data too. (I'm going to bitterly resist having to do All the subduction zones.)

[vass]

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