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Geek Culture / Maaaaaan... this is boring!

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Hamish McHaggis
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Posted: 5th Apr 2003 17:19
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Imagine counting the number of syllables per word for 100 words in a newspaper. Then imagine counting the number of letters per word for those 100 words in that newspaper. Then imagine counting the number of words per paragraph for 10 paragraphs on that same article...

Now imagine doing that 9 times over, and that's pretty much what my statistics coursework entails.

GTG, my second article calls... 11..12..13..14..
Why the hell'd you ask me for crying out loud!?!
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Danmatsuma
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Posted: 5th Apr 2003 17:32
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just try and stay focused on the money you could earn in an exciting carrer like logistics *lol*
But if you're into buckets of cash my cousin does that in london and is doin' mighty well.
Personally I left school to join a rock'n roll band at year 10...

ZX Spectrum 48k Issue 3, Radio shack Tape drive, Rank arena 12" T.V. set.
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Hamish McHaggis
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Posted: 5th Apr 2003 17:43
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Don't worry, I'm speeding along now, only 7 articles to go!

Why the hell'd you ask me for crying out loud!?!
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Rob K
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Posted: 5th Apr 2003 18:43
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What qualification are we talking here Hamish, GCSE or A-Level?

Current Project: Retro Compo. Entry.
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Rob K
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Posted: 5th Apr 2003 18:44
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^^ BTW. For stats coursework why don't you just nick some stats off of the United Nations website and analyse them, much easier.

Current Project: Retro Compo. Entry.
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Hamish McHaggis
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Posted: 5th Apr 2003 19:42
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GCSE, I would get the articles off the internet but they have to be from newspapers (I could use the internet for my pilot sample but I've done that now).

Why the hell'd you ask me for crying out loud!?!
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Danmatsuma
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Posted: 5th Apr 2003 20:06
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It's weird how tey think Newspaper articles are somehow more truthful and legit, when everyday I see something else in the paper that's been plagarized from some web article, sometimes the "journalists" even take the credit!

ZX Spectrum 48k Issue 3, Radio shack Tape drive, Rank arena 12" T.V. set.
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Kentaree
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Posted: 5th Apr 2003 20:28
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lol Hamish, you've never been in my Geography class, each minute feels like 10, double classes are lethal . I tell you, when our teacher dies, they're gonna make him into sleeping tablets, most effective ones ever made

Whatever I did I didn't do it!
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Rob K
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Posted: 5th Apr 2003 20:43 Edited at: 5th Apr 2003 20:43
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"but they have to be from newspapers"

Bollocks - I did my GCSE Stats coursework a few months ago and I was allowed to source the data from where-ever I wanted. The UN website is great for that kind of stuff. I wrote a quick parser in VB to produce a CSV file from the data (20 mins work), but don't do that unless you have time to kill. Our maths teacher is quite helpful in that area (like our last coursework where he "accidentally" left complete, full, "specimen" notes on a desk at the back of the room

Current Project: Retro Compo. Entry.
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Hamish McHaggis
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Posted: 5th Apr 2003 21:27
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Its just our maths teacher who won't let us use the net, seems that using word count on MS Word isn't as accurate as counting every single bloody letter in the article! I also worries me that some people have done 45 pages of solid writing , but thats just excessive. It also didn't help that he told us the deadline was this tuesday, last thursday.

BTW Rob, I don't know what a parser or a CSV file is, are they something to do with VB or stats? Sorry, I've only been doing stats for a year, we do our maths GCSE next year.

Why the hell'd you ask me for crying out loud!?!
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Rob K
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Posted: 5th Apr 2003 21:49 Edited at: 5th Apr 2003 21:52
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" I also worries me that some people have done 45 pages of solid writing"

What ?! - It got 96% for my stats coursework and I only did about 10 pages, including box-and-whisker plots and all the other stats stuff.

For the other coursework (alebra) I managed to compress it down from 20 to 4 pages if you use A-Level maths (whereby you can actually get the right answer rather than pages and pages of trial and error).

A parser is just something which is to do with programming in general.

Basically a CSV (Comma Seperated Values) is a database like file where each entry is seperated by a comma eg:

[Name][Age]
John,17,Mark,16,Luis,14

etc.

The parser just replaced spaces in the UN data with commas

John 17
Mark 16
Luis 14

>> John,17,Mark,16,Luis,14

So that Excel would accept it as a CSV file.

"Its just our maths teacher who won't let us use the net"

Just use the net and lie about your source - he won't know the difference if you do the research at home. Alternatively if you have a scanner then just scan the article in, check that it reads OK and make quick corrections, then use a Text Recognition program on it. Then you can write a VERY quick program in Visual Basic or DBPro to do the work for you

Just curious, but which school do you go to?

Mind you, if you thought that Maths was bad, wait until you see Art or Photography if you are doing them. You have to fill up 2 40-page work journals (A4 size) in six weeks. And DT is 20 A3 pages + a 12 hour practical piece (mind you, one normally gets 25 weeks for that).

Current Project: Retro Compo. Entry.
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Hamish McHaggis
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Posted: 5th Apr 2003 22:04
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Yeah, I'm doing electronics and art, I know you have to do lots, but we get all 2 years to fill up our sketch books (work journals) and electronics is crazy. Our teacher picks out the best coursework from his previous year and says 'Oh yeah, this is an average/bad piece from last year and I expect you to do much better', but I find electronics relitively easy.

I will take the rest of my stuff from the net, and I go to a secondary-school near Cambridge. There are a few so you can guess.

I think I will do about 10 pages aswell, I have 2 pages of planning and 3 frequency diagrams already, and thats before I have my data.

Why the hell'd you ask me for crying out loud!?!
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Hamish McHaggis
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Posted: 5th Apr 2003 22:48 Edited at: 5th Apr 2003 22:52
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I have to have a tally chart for my letter and syllable counting and I just wrote a program that does that for me . Unfortunately syllables are quite hard to do using DB!

Why the hell'd you ask me for crying out loud!?!
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Rob K
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Posted: 5th Apr 2003 23:12
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What!

Tally charts are absolutely pointless - they don't earn very many bonus marks and take soooo long to do.

The key to getting high marks is to get in as many different kinds of stats analysis as possible and to write and a thourough, in-depth, relative conclusion.

"but we get all 2 years to fill up our sketch books (work journals)"

You have 3 modules to do, the two sketch books are just one of the modules. The other 2 involve another two whole folders' worth. The 10 hour exam at the end is pretty dragging as well.

Current Project: Retro Compo. Entry.
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Hamish McHaggis
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Posted: 6th Apr 2003 00:07 Edited at: 6th Apr 2003 00:10
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Our teacher says you can't get an A without tally charts and cumulative frequency poligons, I dunno if hes right but I'm doing them anyway, although I don't know how I can do cumulative frequencies in newspaper statistics.

Oh right, I didn't know that about the art, and the 10 hr exam does sound pretty bad, but you do get to listen to music in it and you get to prepare what you're going to do beforehand.

My counting is coming along nicely as I have a computer to do it for me now, Im on the last 2 articles.

Why the hell'd you ask me for crying out loud!?!
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Hamish McHaggis
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Posted: 6th Apr 2003 00:34
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I've finished in half the time it would have taken, and I'll count the syllables on my 2hr car journey to my cousins house tommorow. Thanks for the advice Rob, now all that remains is to draw tons of graphs and write an analysis.

Why the hell'd you ask me for crying out loud!?!
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Rob K
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Posted: 6th Apr 2003 00:46
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Good Luck Hamish

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Shadow Robert
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Posted: 6th Apr 2003 02:50
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lol sounds like fun
my old school were weren't allowed to use computers for many things, apart from IT work (when we had IT) and if our handwriting was truely atrosous then we could use them to type up.

unfortunately found most of my IT lessons in a bleeding classroom learning about barcode scanners and crap, when we finally did get onto the computers they taught up the basics of databases (in excel) and wordprocessing (in word) ... it was stupid cause as it happens the year after my own they started to learn HTML in IT as well, spending alot more time on the computers.

something that has always pissed me off is that when i take a course in something we learn the basic crap i learnt when i was still in freakin' diapers - yet the next year on always got something better. have a feelin' that the universe is constantly have a good ol' chuckle at my expense.

one good note Hamish atleast non of the articles say "written by Raven" at the end so they can't be that big hehee

Tsu'va Oni Ni Jyuuko Fiori Sei Tau!
One block follows the suit ... the whole suit of blocks is the path ... what have you found?
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Danmatsuma
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Posted: 6th Apr 2003 23:24
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heh, consider yourselves lucky, it took my high school till I was in yr 8 'till we got 5 apple][c's and I had to spend lunch breaks answering all kinds of bloody questions as only 1 other kid in the school knew anything abou't 'em, much less the actual teachers.
Same when I decided to go and study new media as a mature age student, they were using powermac's running alias sketch 1.0...And at home on my pc I had truespace, Imagine and max v1.0.
They decided to break up the course structure into "2d","3d",and "interactive"
Which makes no bloody sense 'cos they all rely on eachother and end up as 2d anyhow... Like 2d meant photoshop, and only photoshop, interactive meant director, and only director, and 3d meant sketch and only sketch.
So you had people doing like textureless models in 3d, flat nonsense in 2d, and director apps that were made using only director's inbuilt paint package!!
Soooo stupid, to separate those things, and I think a direct result of using the powermac's, 'cos on a pc you coulda had all those apps running at once, and drag'n drop a sprite you made in a 3d package into pshop for some touchups, drag that into director and make something reasonably cool for the time, but that was frowned upon and considered sloppy, in fact they were so anti pc there that they kept deleting copies of pc to mac that I left on the desktops!!.

ZX Spectrum 48k Issue 3, Radio shack Tape drive, Rank arena 12" T.V. set.
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the_winch
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Posted: 7th Apr 2003 00:58
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At my school they had old amstrad things with a green screens because they only had a few pcs. If you where really unlucky you got to use on of the electronic typewriters. It was only 4 years ago.
Pretty much made the qualification useless you couldn't exactly get an office job when you can't use word.

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Martyn Pittuck
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Posted: 7th Apr 2003 11:32
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My stats work was on people doing a survey etc.

The Outside is a evil place to be, too much light, too much noise and too many distractions....
I went outside once and my FPS rate dropped to 5.
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Shadow
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Posted: 7th Apr 2003 13:46
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Message to anyone who's still got the chance to get out: DO NOT study any subject that has coursework. It really sucks. (Especially if, like me, you always leave it to the last minute. e.g. maths gcse coursework. time allowed = 8 weeks. time spent = 1 day).
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Martyn Pittuck
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Posted: 7th Apr 2003 16:39
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grap[hics NOOOO

30+ pages of coursework

The Outside is a evil place to be, too much light, too much noise and too many distractions....
I went outside once and my FPS rate dropped to 5.
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Hamish McHaggis
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Posted: 7th Apr 2003 18:59 Edited at: 7th Apr 2003 19:00
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Every single subject has coursework .

I didn't do graphics cos I don't like drawing cubes, art is much more creative and fun, although drawing charcole portraits of Formula One drivers for 3 months does get a bit monotonous.

Why the hell'd you ask me for crying out loud!?!
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Shadow
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Posted: 7th Apr 2003 23:54
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Oh, yeah GCSE did have all coursework. Thankfully, only one of my A-level's did: computing.

Tip 2:
Upon receiving briefing for a-level comp. coursework, do not, repeat DO NOT think "Making a Relation Database is too boring. I'll do a 3d world editor in dark basic!"

This is the most insane thing you could ever do, short of making a database of the entire oxford english dictionary.
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Hamish McHaggis
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Posted: 8th Apr 2003 18:26
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I've finished collecting all the data, now I've got to wait for my friend to give me the other half of the data (we're doing the collecting in pairs) and then I can analyse it, the problem is, he hasn't collected any of the data and I've got 2 days left!?! Oh dear!

Why the hell'd you ask me for crying out loud!?!

Athelon XP 1400 Plus - Nvidia Geforce MX400 - 256mb RAM
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Hamish McHaggis
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Posted: 10th Apr 2003 19:12
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Hah hah! After 16 hours work and 2 late nights in the past 48 hours, I have finally finished and handed it in! Unsurprisingly quite a few people were off sick (one person had done 2 pages yesterday at 8 o clock and decided to go to MacDonalds!).

I know no-one is reading this post any more but I'd just like to say that I will be doing nothing for the next day or so, until I hopefully decide not to leave my English coursework till the last minute.

Why the hell'd you ask me for crying out loud!?!

Athelon XP 1400 Plus - Nvidia Geforce MX400 - 256mb RAM
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Danmatsuma
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Posted: 10th Apr 2003 19:28
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Duly noted Hamish
and Congratulations!

ZX Spectrum 48k Issue 3, Radio shack Tape drive, Rank arena 12" T.V. set.
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