Slide baby slide...

This is the slide presentation that my group did for an assignment in a intro to computer and internet course at UQ Australia, to compare and contrast 'Spreadsheets' and 'Databases', and also present data that we collected on our time used throughout the span of two weeks.

Spreadsheets and databases

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: spreadsheets databases)

Is productive productive? 2nd round

Well in earlier posts you can see there isn't any major changes in the hours that i spend for productive activities for the two weeks as i tend to be consistent in how determined or lazy i am for a certain period. Is there any change to my effectiveness of study? I think not. I tend to do enough to get by, going back for improvements on stuff that interests me. And as previously mentioned, time is allocated more in between leisure activities.

Is productive productive?

As previously stated, 35 hours (for me)were allocated to assignment and uni work... Thats all well and good, but does that time usage prove to be effective for study? We argued that using that data alone shows nothing about the effectiveness of study when there is no point of reference or comparison. For example does those hours reflect on my grades? For my group, we didn't think those two weeks come even close to reflect on our GPA or grades since its just a sample of two random weeks. It also discounts other factors that might affect grade such as distractions, focus, and burnout.



http://www.flickr.com/photos/dr_jobe/2969713103/

Looking at the overall total for the two weeks, travelling and eating takes up quite a lot of hours. Although classes take 60 hours or so, it discounts setting up, settling down, travelling from one class to the next, so the productiveness/effectiveness may be highly reduced. For me assignments time and social time are almost interchangable as both commonly occurs when I am surfing the internet (assignments are mainly web based). So to be realistic, more focus would have been paid towards socialising or empty browsing than work.

Week 2 Reflections

Student	Date	ADL	Leisure	Productive Activities	Grand Total
Zun	9/7/2008	13.5	7	3	23.5
	9/8/2008	17	2	7	26
	9/9/2008	13.75	4.5	5	23.25
	9/10/2008	10.75	5	8	23.75
	9/11/2008	14.25	5.75	4	24
	9/12/2008	21.25		4.25	25.5
	9/13/2008	9.75	6.25	4	20
	9/14/2008	12.75	7.25	7	27
	9/15/2008	16	2	6	24
	9/16/2008	16.75	1.75	4	22.5
	9/17/2008	10.25	7	7.25	24.5
	9/18/2008	15.25	3.25	6	24.5
	9/19/2008	20		2	22
	9/20/2008	8.5	8.25	2.75	19.5
Zun Total		199.75	60	70.25	330

Week 2 starts from the 14th ending the 20th

If we see the totals for both leisure (29.5) and productive activities (35), it is very similar to week one's totals (30.5 and 35.25)and shows I tend to be consistent and follow a routine of how long I study or when i spend time on leisure.

I think my time allocations are determined more by my leisure activities. For example because of time differences from here to my home country, I always schedule a time when my friends would meet me online, so time waiting for them to come on will be spent on studying or assignments. The same goes for when waiting for the time scheduled for training at the gym. I would spend that time fixing code, reading research papers and taking notes for later.

Serious studying will be done at night which is found to be optimal for me (probably because its cooler).

Reflection on Day 1

Student	Date	ADL	Leisure	Productive Activities	Grand Total
Zun	9/7/2008	13.5	7	3	23.5
	9/8/2008	17	2	7	26
	9/9/2008	13.75	4.5	5	23.25
	9/10/2008	10.75	5	8	23.75
	9/11/2008	14.25	5.75	4	24
	9/12/2008	21.25		4.25	25.5
	9/13/2008	9.75	6.25	4	20
	9/14/2008	12.75	7.25	7	27
	9/15/2008	16	2	6	24
	9/16/2008	16.75	1.75	4	22.5
	9/17/2008	10.25	7	7.25	24.5
	9/18/2008	15.25	3.25	6	24.5
	9/19/2008	20		2	22
	9/20/2008	8.5	8.25	2.75	19.5
Zun Total		199.75	60	70.25	330

As you can see in week 1, ending on the 13th, the total estimated hours spent on productive activities is 35.25 hours,15 or so hours would have likely been for my 4 unit major course which recommends a 20 hour work week. My productive activities only consists of uni and assignment work as I do not have a job.

I learn that I also spend a lot of time travelling which never occured to me. A round trip to uni alone takes close to two hours, think about setting up for class, or turning on the computer, and already the hours wasted piles up, no wonder the days feel so short.

Leisure hours total up to 30.5 hours, a majority of which i can confidently tell is from the internet. This category includes social activities and games, so it is understandable that I spend a lot of time on the intenet chatting or gaming with friends since I am an international student.

Background Data

Our task was for groups to monitor and track their own time spent on various activities throughout two weeks, at the end of which they were to present the statistics and evaluate how they spent their time. To present this effectively, my team consisting of me, the dude with the rad surname Sina, and the beautiful Michelle, decided on breaking down the tasks that we did into three different categories:

• Productive activities (consisting of paid work, assignments, class time, studies, etc)
• Leisure (consists of social and recreational activities, and of course the gym)
• Activities of Daily Living (which we conviniently short formed ADL; covers sleeping, eating, travelling and the like)

Data collected was put in spreadsheets, you know, those boxes thingy that looks like tables. At the end totals were taken for each categories and compared. Following posts will reflect on how these data represent how I personally spend my time.

Welcome

This blog is born for one purpose... for an assignment for COMP1900 course in University of Queensland Australia. Here I will attempt to sound smarter than I really am as we will explore statistics, data and reflections. So I would like to thank all readers for the two minutes or so they just spent reading here and hope that it would atleast be entertaining.