Comments | winkingstar: It's kind of like GraphJam, except less amusing . . .

winkingstar

It's kind of like GraphJam, except less amusing . . .

Mar 19, 2009 20:57

You may or may not care about my Fanlore study, but I spent approximately seven hours on one graph yesterday and it is not really useful for much of anything so I am posting it here. For posterity. Or something.

( graphic scenes ahead, har har )

adventures in aca-fandom, school: classes

Comments 8

propinquitine March 20 2009, 21:15:11 UTC

Okay, these are awesome! And now I want to see the first one with SGA thrown in as a fandom node, too, because I recognize a lot of those names. :-)

There's got to be a way for you to get the data for them more easily. How were you getting the info for which articles ratcreature's edited? Is that all on one page (I'm not too familiar with Fanlore's editing process), or did you have to hunt around the site to find it? Maybe if you contact the site hosts/maintainers (and include some of your graphs!), they'll see that you're totally legit and give you the URL for the secret "here is the page with all of the data you need in an easy copy-and-paste format" page.

And maybe ping ratcreature and send her a copy of the "here is you at the center of everything, ever" graph. :-)

winkingstar March 20 2009, 21:36:50 UTC

Hee, yay! I'm glad someone is intrigued. :) I just posted more graphs, too. Oof ( ... )

fish_echo March 20 2009, 22:00:10 UTC

I stand in awe of your graphics-fu. *awe* (also, have some more *envy* :P ( ... )

winkingstar March 20 2009, 23:24:51 UTC

Yay, another graph fan ( ... )

fish_echo March 21 2009, 02:52:46 UTC

Thank you for the feedback, but we are limited by the stupid program we're using (you know, the crappy Microsoft beta program I wanked about earlier? the one that no one, including the professor, actually knows how to use properly?). I don't think that program does x-axis/y-axis type graphs.

Gaaah, so very annoying! I had forgotten that :( Or perhaps I'm just into the habit of open-source software (and programs that aren't 'beta' version when they're clearly 'alpha').

And I'll admit that when I was talking about the x-axis/y-axis graphs I was assuming that you'd be doing that in some standard plotting program, after using whatever to extract the data.

And I'd still have the problem of not being able to get the data parsed easily.
Do you know what this calls for? LAB MONKEYS! Lab monkeys clearly would solve all of your research-related annoyances!

anonymous April 23 2009, 20:13:00 UTC

It may be a headache but the results look great :o)

Sometimes when I do a graph (or other visual representation of data) at work I get so focused I can loose hours, and even though it sometimes seems like a waste in the end the actual process can be interesting and teach you skills you will use later. Wow, how boring do I sound?!

I didn't realise I was a graphGeek!

(horrifc spellcheck just tried to make me change realise to realize!)

winkingstar April 24 2009, 01:01:32 UTC

Yeah, I got a lot of compliments on my lovely graphs, and the professor liked them, so it was worth the headache. And it's really fun to see the relationships visualised like that.

The program we were using, though, is a really crappy beta version (to the point where it should probably still be an alpha version). I actually didn't have as much trouble with it as other people, who said it kept crashing and giving them error messages. Most of my grief was caused by not knowing Excel well enough to navigate it (this program, NodeXL, is an app that runs on MS Excel).

loosair April 23 2009, 20:14:01 UTC

Didn't realise I hadn't logged in when I posted a comment just now!