Data Collection & Representation

I did an activity about describing a person based on what's in their bedroom by using a picture, list, and a word cloud in my Exploring Computer Science class not too long ago. Along with that, we watched a video that deals with how a story is told by data. Basically, data being represented by a picture is good because you can use it to make a number of unique data sets, draw conclusions from it easily, and is more comprehensive. Not only that, but a computer will be able to make conclusions by using a list too. However, it's also bad because computers will have a hard time trying to come up with conclusions from an image that's representing data. It may even be impossible for them at times! Furthermore, they can't be turned into a data set or graph very easily, and it will also be a challenge to compare it with similar pictures. On the other hand, data being represented by a list is good because conclusions and statistics are also easy to come up with by referring to one, especially if it's a data table or graph. Plus, it's not too hard to compare it to other lists that are similar to it. Unfortunately, the conclusions made by referring to a list are typically not very detailed.

The video that we watched in class for the activity. It was made by TED-ed.