Lesson 7: Setting the Stage

Lesson 7: Setting the Stage [The Data Cycle: Collect Data]

Objective

You will begin to collect and record data to learn more about your own eating habits, as well as those of your classmates. You will learn about data that is collected by a Participatory Sensing campaign, and also about privacy issues and photo ethics when collecting and sharing data.

Vocabulary

Participatory Sensing, campaign, surveys, images, GPS, ethics, photo ethics

Essential Concepts

Lesson 7 Essential Concepts

In Participatory Sensing, we humans behave as if we are robot sensors, collecting data whenever a "trigger" event occurs. Our ability to learn about the patterns in our life through these data depends on our being reliable data collectors.

ATTENTION

For every single lesson:

Answer the questions in red font in your Introduction to Data Science (IDS) Journal.

Lesson

In this lesson you will become familiar with the Food Habits Campaign guidelines (found in the Campaign Guidelines section, just after this lesson). There are big questions found under “The Issue”, the first item in the Food Habits Campaign guidelines, to help guide you during the campaign.
Your teacher will distribute your username and password. Make sure to not share this information with anyone else. You will need this username and password when you are ready to download the IDS UCLA app.
Think about the Nutrition Facts labels from which you collected data in the previous lesson, then answer the following questions:
1. What questions would you want answered about eating habits?
2. What can you do to find out about your own eating habits?
Now refer back to your reactions to Jamie Oliver’s video and ponder the following question: What am I really eating?
Over the next 9 days, you will engage in a Participatory Sensing campaign. This means that you will use a smart device or web browser to act as a "human sensor" to collect data about yourself (Participatory Sensing) via a survey or "campaign" focused on a specific topic (in this case, snacking habits). The data collected will be used to analyze your classmates’ and your own snacking habits.
For this campaign, you will collect data about every snack you eat.

Note: You should NOT collect data for full meals like breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Data should only be collected for anything eaten in between meals, like fruit, chips, cookies, nuts, sodas, etc.
Why does it makes sense to study snacks specifically? Brainstorm some questions that could be answered using the snack-only data that would be hard to answer if the data included meals as well.
You will be taking part in a specific data collection method known as Participatory Sensing via a mobile application. This application can gather data via surveys, images, and GPS tracking.
The reason you are collecting the data is to learn more about yourself and your classmates, NOT to provide data for an external data collection team. Occasionally, there has been a misconception that when you use the Participatory Sensing app, you are providing data to external researchers, such as UCLA. This is not the case.
You are now going to engage in your own first Participatory Sensing data collection experience in which you will collect your own data using a smart device. You'll have 3 different options for collecting data, depending upon the device you'll be using.
1. Android: A native Android application called “IDS UCLA” is available from the Google Play Store.
2. iOS (Apple devices): The mobile application called “IDS UCLA” is available from the iOS App Store.
3. Browser-based version: If you do not have a mobile device (or if you're using an unsupported device like a Windows phone or Blackberry), a browser-based version is available on your server. To find your server and begin data collection, go to:
  https://idsucla.org/ids-servers.
The video below provides a detailed explanation of how to download and use the IDS UCLA app to take a survey. Your teacher will tell you which server you will be using.
Once you have downloaded the app or have found the website, take out your login information to log into the app. You need to keep this information in a safe place for the entire duration of this course. It is incredibly important to keep your username and password confidential. If you have trouble with your login, your teacher has the ability to reset your password.
Once logged into the app or the browser-based version, you will see the campaigns in which you will participate. Your teacher will give you the name of the campaign for which you are collecting data. You will then select a particular campaign by tapping its name in the app. If no campaigns are visible, tap the Refresh option, located on the top right-hand side of the screen.
Using one of your nutrition facts cutouts or pictures, complete your first survey by going through the questions in the app.
After you've had the opportunity to complete at least one survey, write the meaning of the word "ethics" in your IDS Journal.

For this course, you will need to understand photo ethics. You may NOT take pictures of any person’s identifying features such as face, hair, hands, tattoos, etc. For this campaign, you may only take pictures of your snacks and/or the nutrition facts labels.

Note: Your teacher will inspect all students’ data collection photos throughout the data collection period, monitoring to ensure that no inappropriate images are shared. If they believe a photo is inappropriate, they will delete the data entry immediately.
Setting reminders: The IDS UCLA app has a reminder feature to help you in your data collection journey. You can set reminders directly on the app by tapping the menu button on the top left-hand side of the screen and selecting Reminders from the menu.
Data collection norms: Your teacher will ask the whole class how many snacks they think they eat a day. From this, as a class you will come up with an approximate number of surveys you think each student should complete during the data collection period.
Remember that your teacher will be monitoring your data collection to make sure that everyone is submitting surveys regularly.
Refer to the previous day’s homework.

Now that you've had the opportunity to collect and record data for the Food Habits campaign, what are some predictions you have about possible responses to your 2 simple statistical questions and 2 complex statistical questions?

Reflection

What are the essential learnings you are taking away from this lesson?

Homework

For the next 9 days, you will collect nutritional facts data using the Food Habits Participatory Sensing campaign on your smart device or via web browser.