Fence-sitting
I had to laugh this morning at Scott McLemee’s piece in Inside Higher Ed proclaiming the difference - or rather, what he’d define as such as there appears to be no truly common consensus - between a geek and a nerd:
As a nerd, my bias is towards paper-and-ink books, and while I do indeed use information technology, asking a coherent question about how any of it works is evidently beyond me. A geek, by contrast, knows source code….has strong opinions about source code….can talk to other geeks about source code, and at some length. (One imagines them doing so via high-pitched clicking noises.) My wife understands network protocols. I think that Network Protocols would be a pretty good name for a retro-‘90s dance band.
While the content of the article is not really about the difference between geeks and nerds, I find this distinction somewhat.. interesting all the same. I would claim, by Scott’s definition, to be neither properly a nerd nor a geek, but rather some combination of the two* - while the printed word holds value and mystique, I’m not so wed to dead-tree format that I don’t understand code, but I’m also not adept enough with code to speak in high-pitched clicking noises. Taking this a step further, I would say this appears to be yet another divide in which practitioners of institutional research sit the fence.
(More beyond the jump.. things got a little long!) Read the rest of this entry »
Things I keep meaning to look into..
Thanks to Sara, I stumbled across Flowing Data a few weeks ago. It’s got me thinking a lot about data visualization and, as it’s the time of year when those sort of pipe dream projects get a little more chance of getting explored, I’ve been keeping track of the things related to data visualization and reporting and such that I want to look into more when I have some time. Below is a quick list, annotated more for my own reference.
PolicyMap - this one’s neat and I want to figure out if what it does is what I think it does and whether it might be worth paying for in order to pull demographic information about the areas from which we get our students. Knowing, for instance, if we get applications but not enrollments from particular areas and being able to dig into additional local and regional demographic information might be able to help us figure out if we’re not attractive as an option for students from particular backgrounds, which could then lead to further research about why.
blist - I’m not at all sure I understand what this is or maybe just not how it works, but I’m intrigued by the idea of sharing data structures across users. Seems like this might be terribly useful for IR folks using data from some of the larger student information systems (PeopleSoft, Banner, Datatel, etc.) to report out to the Common Data Set and IPEDS..? As a more or less totally random aside, I’ve also wondered if the name originated from a slurring of “b-list” or as a slang word a la “blissed out”.
BigTable - not data visualization but rather data storage, this one breaks all kinds of commonly accepted database design and efficiency rules, and possibly because of that is terribly intriguing. No idea what possible application it might have for me, but it’s neat and therefore worthy of being checked out more.
Tableau - this was a vendor from the conference I was at last week and I’ll admit that I’m a little skeptical that it really can do everything it claims. There’s also the piece about sharing online through *their* servers that makes me twitch a little.. but.. I’m intrigued, so I’ll check it out further.
For what it’s worth, I’m also trying to figure out if I can carve out time this summer to learn more about Fuzzy Set Theory and how some lessons from econometrics and forecasting models, particularly ARIMA, could be applied to enrollment projections.. yeah.. I tend to get optimistic about summer projects, but I think if you don’t, you just get stuck doing what you’ve always done and I guess I get bored with that too fast. *smile*
It’s not Wednesday yet, is it?
I have a love/hate relationship with this week. I love that the semester is finally over, that things are actually *slow* (or what counts for it around here), that campus is nearly deserted and very quiet. I hate that I lose just about all motivation to do anything in my office (there’s some twisted logic in there related to finally feeling like I don’t have to be running all the time, so I just want to stop altogether or something), that once I clean up the few things of interest all that’s left are the things that got put off because I needed more than two minutes in a row to figure them out, that I can’t really stop running because I’ll be out again all next week at a conference.
This year I also hate that my dad and Jack are ripping out a wall in our house and I don’t get to help. I mean.. remodeling sucks, really, I get that.. but they’re doing the fun part today and all I’ll get to see is the rubble and the dust once it’s done. (We’re making the (actually rather large) closet in our bedroom more accessible; it’s currently accessed by a standard door, but runs the length of the wall (10 feet?) so we’re ripping out the wall and putting in sliding doors and a shelving system to make it a real, functional closet.)
Even Celtic Stompgrass on Pandora is not helping much today, largely because it seems that they don’t really have all that much that fits that description in their catalogue so I’m to the point where I’ve heard all the songs they’re coming up with several times in the last couple days. Don’t get me wrong, I still like them (most of them anyway), but I want to find more new stuff. (And I’m really trying not to be too upset that I’ll miss the Paperboys by a little over a week..)
Life’s been.. interesting lately, but most of it is not really suitable for here, so you’ll have to take my word for it. *shrug*
Random Thursday
As an Institutional Researcher, this is about 90% of what I do daily. Because Institutional Research is one of those more or less obscure careers - most people have no idea what it is, even a fair number of the rank and file in academia - there’s no predominant path people take to get here. In the three and half or so years I’ve been in this profession, I think that my background as a social worker has been far more useful than my background as a researcher or a statistician. Social workers are trained to see person-in-environment - to explicitly see the context of a particular set of circumstances. More than anything else I do, being able to set the context around any particular piece or set of data is by far the most valuable (and also most often overlooked by users of data). (If you want an example, ask me about the IPEDS Graduation Rate Survey sometime.. *smile*)
I apparently smell like jelly beans today. *shrug*
The Peterson’s Graduate Survey has become officially known as “The Evil Survey(tm)” by my student survey monkey. This amusing me for several reasons, not the least of which being that it is truly an evil survey.
I promised pictures of Ornette; here are a couple from when I hit the 3 inch mark a few days ago (row 36 or the 40 row cable pattern):
As usual, all pictures are clickable thumbnails.
I’m knitting the large size of the pattern and started with the right sock. I’m using Cherry Tree Hill Supersock Merino yarn on US1 needles. I thought I had a set of Harmony US1s, but I can’t find them so I’m using Clover bamboo needles, which are just not quite pointy enough for the cabling and causing the yarn to be splittier than I think it should be. Despite the heavily cabled appearance, the sock is fairly elastic - relaxed, it measures about 6.5 inches, but it stretches enough not to be tight or luck stretched out around my 10.5 inch lower calf. (I’d show you a picture, but it’s rather difficult to take a picture of your own calf, particularly when the interesting part of the pattern is on the outside!)
At Cookie’s request, I washed and blocked it this morning (I’m now through row 40, one full repeat of the cable chart), but apparently can’t take a non-blurry picture today; it also appears darker because it’s still damp.
The yarn did bloom a little in washing, but I didn’t lose as much stitch definition as it appears from the pictures. I might go outside at lunch and try to get some better pictures.
A caveat: I’m test knitting the pattern along with a couple dozen other folks, so it’s possible that the pattern I knit will be different from the final released pattern. There have been one or two minor revisions already, but for cosmetic purposes; the pattern is well written and easy to follow if you understand how to read charts. I’ve been doing the cabling without a cable needle, which is a bit of a new trick with the small gauge (and is another reason I’d really like some pointier needles).
Not dead (yet?)
It’s been.. well.. if life is what happens when you’re not paying attention, I’m not sure what it’s been lately. Busy. (Hrm.. I thought I posted this last night.. guess not..)
I have been knitting - the first Charade sock is finished, I’m almost through half of the third chart of the Peacock Feather shawl, I’m a skein and a bit into a holiday gift sweater - but not as much as I should (the shawl is due in mid-November, has 7 charts plus, and each pair of rows is two stitches longer than the last two). I have the yarn for the DNA scarf that I’m knitting, along with four sets of the new KnitPicks Harmony wood needles - two sets of DPNs (size 0 and size 2 - the set I’m missing 2 needles from and the set I use the most) and two sets of 16″ circs (size 2 and size4 - both needed for the DNA scarf, though because the points are sharper than my Clover bamboos, I’m currently using the size 4 on the Peacock Feather shawl). So far, I’m *loving* the Harmony needles.. can’t wait to try out the DPNs (and I wonder if I swap out for the bamboo ones I’m using in the second Charade sock if it will mess up my gauge enough to tell..?).
I would go back through and link all that, but.. well, those that are interested also pr’bly have Ravelry by now and you can find the details on my projects in process there. 
I did join a swap - CoffeeSwap III - and I am looking forward to it. If nothing else, it might be a good enough excuse to replace our coffee maker, which died a not-so-glorious death about a week ago. But I’ve already heard from my swap partner and I’m already stewing on stuff to send her!
Work is.. nuts. Non-work “work” is also nuts. It’s time for me to start disentangling myself from things, but the earliest I can disentangle from anything is the end of the calendar year, so .. yeah. Might be kinda quiet-like over this way for a bit.
A little help from my friends..?
Okay.. so I am thinking about writing the next issue (August) of the little newsletter that I do for my office - which in the past has focused on things like how the US News rankings are computed, how “competitive” our admissions really are, and what a graduation rate is (and isn’t) - on Facebook. Specifically on why our faculty and administrators need to get over their fear of it and start using it to connect to our students. This is, admittedly, a bit of a stretch for a newsletter from an institutional research office, but I’m thinking that if I start by talking about how many of our students use Facebook already and talk about the tools Facebook offers for reaching said students (flyers and surveys immediately come to mind, but there are also the events and groups), it might be close enough. Might being the key word there.
This is where you come in, especially those of you in academia yourselves - is this something you’d expect not be all “WTF?!” about if your institutional research office did? (Holy bad grammar, Batman! *sigh* Yeah.. I’m a numbers person; the words.. sometimes they abandon me in protest.)
Musings from LAX
This:
.. is where I’ve been this week.
It’s been glorious.
My meeting Monday and Tuesday - the last face-to-face meeting for this project - went well and I feel that the work we’ve done has good, solid potential to be adopted by the sponsoring organizations. My role in that work was not insignificant, and that is something for which I’m both proud and grateful.
Starting around 2 on Tuesday, though, I’ve been on vacation and got to spend three laid back and relaxing days catching up with and getting to know better a few good friends. It’s not uncommon for me to be mildly anxious at being a house guest, especially at the home of someone I don’t know “like kin”, but my welcome was nothing short of warm and friendly and, best of all, casual. I typically prefer to simply melt into the background of any particular gathering and my friends here allowed me that - they allowed me to simply join their lives for a few days and exist alongside them as they went about doing what they do. I could not have asked for a better vacation and am already counting the days until we are reunited (133, in fact *smile*).
Because they are also SCAdians, and because SCAdians tend to be artisans of all sorts, I had time to work on some projects while I was here as well. The first of the Sprung Socks (PDF), from the Yarn Pirate yarn I received from Stephanie as part of the Gnome Swap, is almost complete:
I’ve also worked up a fair bit more of the baby camel and tussah silk since I last posted about it:
I will likely soon wind off the copp of this one as it’s getting a bit heavy to keep the thread as thin as I’d like. I haven’t decided yet what this will be, mostly because I’m not sure how much of it I’ll end up with. I’m hoping for something thin enough to make a lace wrap, or maybe the edging of one.
I also started working up the cashgora I got in Kansas City with Cate and Sara:
I’m loving the color in this, but working with the goat fiber is a bit different from wool - it has noticeably less crimp and is coarser than what I’ve been working with lately, much more like hair than fleece. All the same, I’m truly enjoying watching the color shifts and expect that this will be my first Navajo plied yarn so that I can maintain said shifts without muddying them.
I also managed to find some uninterrupted reading time, a luxury I rarely afford myself when at home. I finished The Dress Lodger by Sheri Holman, a book selected by a book group that’s recently started meeting on campus. It’s an odd little novel, centered (as seems to be somewhat of a theme with this group so far) on a cholera epidemic in early 19th century England. It took me awhile to really get into the book - something about the characters seemed distant, making it difficult for me to really care about their story - but by the end I was hooked in enough that it wasn’t as if I had to force myself to finish it. *shrug* The next book for this group will be The Thirteenth Tale, which I have on order from Zooba and will admit to being a bit stand-offish about given it’s recent acclaim (yes, I am contrary like that).
My guilty pleasure reading after The Dress Lodger is Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel’s Dart, which I’m re-reading to remind myself of the beginnings of this wonderfully crafted tale. Having just finished Kushiel’s Scion I found myself with hazy memories of some of the history and interconnections built up throughout Phedre’s life and because the stories are so engaging it was the perfect choice for a book to get lost in while on vacation and a wonderful travel companion for the four and a half hours of flights home.
Oh, and since I was downloading the pictures in my camera, here’s one of the cheesecake I made last week, unmolded:
Across the pond..
Last week I was blessed with the bounty of many friends. I received two gifts from two friends recently returned from England, and another from a dear, dear friend as a half-birthday gift. Apparently, though, I remain so excited over the receipt of these wonderful gifts that my hands shake resulting in blurry photos.. *smile*
From the Wholly Spirits company, Carol brought me a bottle of 12-year old Speyside single malt, called Love Shovel (no I haven’t tried it yet.. I’m saving it for some as-yet-to-be-determined special occasion):
From Time Traveling Traders, Tori got me a pair of sterling silver and amber earrings - the first pair I’ve worn other than stainless steel piercing rings in over seven years:
And from her travels in Wales, Betsy brought me a enameled brooch of the Welsh Red Dragon, in honor of my many “baby dragon”* days this past spring:
I am well and truly blessed, not only by these gifts but also by the presence of these three truly wonderful women in my life. Each of them, in their own way enriches my life beyond words and I am grateful they each choose to call me a friend.
Moving on to less sentimental thoughts, I cast on a toe-up sock on Artisan’s Row with the Yarn Pirate sock I got from my Gnome Swap pal:
At the time I started it, I didn’t have a plan for the leg, but have since decided on the Sprung Socks pattern from the Keyboard Biologist. I’ve started it since this picture, but think I’ll have to rip it back out since I seem to have skipped half a pattern repeat at the very beginning. These will be my plane knitting for my upcoming trip to Long Beach, so expect a finished picture sometime in the next week or so.
Yesterday was our office’s midsummer potluck, which, at the request of one of our student workers, was centered on cheese cakes. I’ve been wanting to try a recipe posted by TwoSheep since it was posted, so this was a perfect opportunity.
It turned out well, if I do say so myself. This is the first cheesecake I’ve ever made that didn’t crack, and it was creamy and smooth without being underdone. I took a picture of it after I unmolded it from the springform, but am too lazy at the moment to go get the camera to upload it, so you’ll have to trust me that it turned out beautifully. I also made a butterscotch sauce to drizzle over it (recipe from The Joy of Cooking) and let folks add that as they wanted. And it went over very well.. even with no fewer than 8(!) cheesecakes, there wasn’t a single piece left at the end of the day!
I was hoping to get some updated pictures of the garden in here, too, but after spending the day at the Hokah Fun Run, it’s about all I have in me to put out the sprinkler to make sure the tomatoes don’t shrivel up and die. Suffice it to say for now that the garden is doing very well, there are tomatoes on the plants (still small-ish and green, but there), the onions are almost ready to harvest, and I finally got around to thinning the carrots, radishes and peppers. I might try to take some pictures tomorrow morning, but given that I have a noon flight, that might not happen. Especially if I don’t actually manage to pack tonight.
* There are times in my job where it is assumed that I have either more authority or greater sway with those who make the Big Decisions(tm) than I do, largely because I report directly to our Provost, who in turn reports directly to our Chancellor. I have repeatedly assured people that even with such a direct reporting line, my influence is small and rather limited, however this doesn’t seem to stop them from assuming otherwise. This results in me often being frustrated because I *can’t* actually effect change on the level that others assume I should, nor can I mete out retribution on any grand scale. One such day, I expressed this feeling by stating that I felt like a baby dragon, because I’m not big enough to breathe fire, so all I can do is stomp around and “rawr”. Betsy decided that was a very apt definition, and hence, “baby dragon” days were born. So it seems I now have two animal “totems”, as it were - monkeys and dragons.
Quick event recap and VSA redux
Wow. Last week both went way to fast and seems like it lasted a lot longer than just a week.
After finishing the tent repair with mom and dad, we came home to prepare for WW which including making a three entirely new outfits in pseudo-Near Eastern style, one for Jack and two for me. Fortunately, the outfits went together very easily (for those who might understand a bit of SCA jargon, the undertunics are basic t-tunics, just a little longer; the pants are essentially harem pants (yes, I know they’re not entirely appropriate for this, but they are quick and easy and comfy); the coats were just basic t-tunics slit up the front). No, I don’t think there are pictures of either of us in them, but if I find someone who snapped a shot or two, I’ll post them.
We were on site from about noon Wednesday until about 10 Sunday morning. It was rather nice to have a long stretch of time camping and an event where my primary responsibility was to co-coordinate the Artisan’s Row. The Row was a bit larger this year, or at least had more arts represented, which was very neat. In addition to the fiber arts (which are usually well represented) - knitting, spinning, sprang, embroidery, tablet weaving, hand sewing, hand braiding, dyeing - we had a couple wood carvers, a few leather workers, at least one calligrapher, a bowyer, a couple bakers (who treated us to some very tasty flat breads), a brewer demonstrating how to make mead, and even for a short time a musician.
The classes we were able to host (period dyeing, bread making, mead making) seemed to go over well, especially since we didn’t get quite as much posted advertising as I’d planned (my fault entirely - time just seemed to get away from me all week and I didn’t get things where they were needed). As usual, I think we learned some things to do differently next time (whenever that might be), including making sure that folks who aren’t necessarily interested in teaching something on the order of a class know they can come to just hang out and work on their projects on the Row. Additionally, a larger (or maybe just more contiguous) shaded space may be necessary as folks tend to want to congregate in the same space and a single shade fly gets crowded quickly which I think discourages folks from just wandering in to ask about what everyone is working on.
Personally, I wrapped up and plied a decent hank of the Clun Forest lamb’s fleece (not all of it, but maybe a couple ounces worth), but didn’t manage to make it up to Baroness Eithni’s dyepot to try my hand at dyeing it. I also started another pair of toe-up socks with the Yarn Pirate yarn I got from my upstream Gnome Swap pal and I really, really, really love how they’re knitting up. Oh, and I worked a smidge on spinning more of the baby camel/tussah silk top from my SP9 pal. I will snap some pictures in the next few days and post them.
On an unrelated topic, but one that I posted on a couple weeks ago, if you are or know someone who is a prospective/current/former college student, or the parent of a prospective/current/former student, please consider taking a few moments to complete a quick survey about what information you think is most important to assist in the college selection process. Feel free to spread the word if you’re so inclined; the more feedback we get, the more useful we can make the finished product!
This is one of those occasional “educational policy” posts..
Last Spring, the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) and the National Association for State Universities and Land Grant Colleges (NASULGC) convened several task forces to begin working on bringing their proposed Voluntary System of Accountability(sm) (PDF) effort into reality. The VSA(sm) task forces now have a preliminary draft template (PDF) that’s up for comment and feedback as to the feasibility of what’s been created.
There were a couple of guiding principles the Student & Family Information Task Force used in creating this (preliminary draft) template which are pertinent to the data contained in the first two and a half pages:
- The first was that the data should be based off common, pre-existing sources of data. To accomplish this, when ever possible, the template is built on data from the Common Data Set and/or IPEDS and uses formulas and macros to pull the bulk of the data for the first two pages directly from the Excel version of the CDS.
- The second guiding principle was that the data should be presented consistently from institution to institution. The draft of this template includes a uniform set of tables and charts that will auto-generate when inserted into the Excel CDS file. There will be some points of customization (e.g., the use of the school logo in the first page header and the ability to imbed links to institutional web pages), but the idea is for each institution’s VSA(sm) to have the same information in the same place so that (for instance) pages from several institutions can be printed and placed side by side for comparison by prospective students and parents.
The data and elements that are not from the CDS/IPEDS (mostly on pages 3 & 4) are still under discussion by the VSA(sm) Task Forces and may change. You may also note that the Undergraduate Success data are not simply the typical IPEDS graduation rate; the VSA(sm) teams are working with the National Student Clearinghouse on a means of providing this expanded set of success rates to institutions.
If you work in higher ed - or are a parent or prospective student who will be trying to decide which institution to attend - please take a look at the draft template and provide your feedback to the task forces; AASCU is hosting several public forums on their website specifically for the purpose of gathering input and feedback from others. Please take a moment to voice your opinion on what is increasingly becoming an urgent issue in higher education.
