multivariate display

When reading the guidelines and requirements for this assignment I could tell it was obviously going to be complicated and in depth. I would expect no less from a final assignment.  My first thought was what topic I would choose to use in order to create the multivariate display. I did not want to choose a topic that had been done before or settle for one of the suggested topics the teacher provided such as where does my money go. This in the end turned out to be one of if not the biggest obstacle for me, which choosing a topic generally tends to be in my case. It took me about thirty or more minuets alone to finally decide what topic I would choose. After browsing the web and Google and finding nothing of interest my “ahhhh” moment came to me. I chose to do my multivariate display on multiple sclerosis. This disease is of personal interest to me due to the fact that my mother was diagnosed with it around five years ago. Sense then I have seen the effects of the disease on her body physically and emotionally however I have never really taken the time to inform myself in detail about what having the disease may mean for my mother as well as my immediate family. Considering my mother likes to keep her feelings to herself I used this assignment to gain additional knowledge she may have not told me after she was diagnosed with have m.s. I knew that the first visual I would work on would be a mind map sense it did not require research. I stemmed off branches of anything that came into my head that I had already knew about the disease. The following visuals required for the assignment were going to take a lot of research on my part. While there was a whole bunch of information on multiple sclerosis online, finding quantitative data that could be used in a multivariate display was actually quite challenging. Also my own interest in learning about the disease slowed me down a bit because I would often catch myself reading about new treatment methods and or other general information that I could potentially share with my mother if she already did not know. I thought about family a lot while doing this assignment. I found percentage numbers which I used for my table and one of my graphs concerning the risk of developing multiple sclerosis if someone in your family has been diagnosed with the disease. It turns out that I as a first degree relative of my mother have a three to four percent chance of developing multiple sclerosis as opposed to the .1 percent of average people with no relatives who have the disease. The most challenging visual in my multivariate display was the flowchart I created. After spending about fifteen to twenty minutes just thinking about how to make it and coming up with nothing I finally decided to just write down the question “Do I show signs of having m.s.?” I carried on from there and had about two rough drafts before completing the one which is used in my display. Although my flowchart is not that long, I had to keep it as simple as possible due to a lack of space on my poster board and the fact that it could have gone on forever with such an intricate topic. Although my multivariate display may not be as visually appealing as I would like it to be I am pleased with it because I was able to learn much more about multiple sclerosis which makes me feel better about myself considering my mother is affected by the disease. She injects shots into her thigh each day as directed by her doctor and while doing research I came across an article about the first oral treatment for m.s. that has recently come out so I look forward to bringing that up to my mother and showing her that I have an interest in her disease and well being. 

table and graph

This assignment was actually pretty challenging for me. I knew right away when reading what the assignment was that I wanted to do something using the topic of diversity at Roger Williams University. Having lived overseas for three years in Paris, France and another two years in Tokyo, Japan I have always noticed the lack of diversity at this school. I will admit that it the diversity around campus has improved a little bit sense my freshman year but the statistics still show that we have a long ways to go before we can consider ourselves as being part of a diverse community on campus. Finding the statistics was actually much harder than I thought it was going to be. At first, I tried going onto the Roger Williams University website to try and find some percentage numbers about diversity distribution on campus but had no luck. When I couldn’t find the information on the RWU website I then asked my friend Derek who also was in the class with us this winter if he knew of any potential websites to find what I was looking for. He suggested one website to me that he used to find his information that he used for his table and graph but it did not have any statistics on diversity that I could find. I then asked my buddy Matt who was also in the class with us and the only other friend I knew in the class and thankfully he too had done his on diversity and told me to use the College Board website that we had used in high school when considering what colleges to apply to. Mathew and I attended the same high school so I knew what he was talking about and was familiar with College Board. The statistics for diversity did not surprise me at all. Seventy one percent of our school population is white. What struck me as odd and or interesting is that twenty one percent of people had their race/ethnicity as unreported. I wondered why so many people would not want to report what race they were. I figured that the majority of these people were probably not white and feared that reporting their race/ethnicity would in some way cause them to be discriminated against during the application process when they applied to RWU. It is sad that with a slogan such as “Learning to bridge the world” that our school has remained so limited in the diversity department. One thing that I learned through living overseas is that diversity is a good thing. It brings about acceptance of others and shows people that we are all humans no matter what the color of our skin is or where in the world we may come from. A well diverse campus is a cultured campus. With a white population of seventy one percent I would consider Roger Williams University to be pretty uncultured. Three percent is the next highest population of a race on campus but what is three percent compared to a staggering and dominant seventy one percent white? I am currently a senior this year and have been here at RWU for close to four years and every year the topic of diversity is brought up in one or two of my classes. Everyone seems to agree that our campus has an extreme lack of diversity yet nothing ever seems to change. I wonder if it is related to tuition prices, the acceptance process, or if people who are not white don’t want to attend a campus where they are going to be a major minority in. Whatever it is I hope that the RWU community is one day a cultured and diverse place to attend school.

flow chart

I was actually pretty happy to receive this assignment as strange as that may sound. Over the winter break I got my first ever Amazon gift card as a gift for Christmas. I created an account meaning I came up with my username and password that would allow me access to making purchases on the website. I browsed through the site a little bit in my spare time but never ended up using my gift card so I took this assignment as an opportunity to do so. I had gotten an e-mail from a teacher I have this upcoming semester informing the other students in the class and I that we are required to bring the book on the first day of class. I decided to use the money on my gift card to purchase the book and kill two birds with one stone as they say with this assignment. Because I already had an account I treated my flow chart as if anyone reading it also had an account. I did this to keep things simple and to limit the number of boxes and diamonds I would use considering it was my first time making this type of chart visual chart before. There are parts of my chart where I could have used some more diamonds and more stems coming off of them but chose not to in order to keep things simple. However the knowledge and realization that I could make more diamonds and subsets gives me a greater respect for the individuals who must spend countless hours designing and creating intricate flow charts. I can only imagine the complexity some flow charts must get into if even such a simple topic as the process of buying a book on Amazon could fill up two to three pages of white paper if you really got into every minute detail about it. While creating my flow chart simplicity was the keyword on my mind. At the times where I drew a diamond/triangle and asked a question, I made sure that the question was short and to the point. For example “Do you know what book you want?” There really is no room for confusion by the viewer or audience if they were to sue my flowchart and read this question. The answer has to either be yes or no. If I could change anything about my flowchart I think I would use colors in a different way. I would like the initial start box to be one color, the rectangular boxes as their own color, the diamond/triangle shapes where questions are asked as their own color, the yes arrows as their own color, the no arrows as their own color, and the final end box as its own color too. I did not think about doing this at the time I was creating the flowchart and realized that visually it would be much more appealing if I had. Also if I could change something else about the flow chart I would like to really go in depth more. It would interest me to see how many question boxes I could make and see exactly how many stems I could come up with for the process of buying a book on Amazon. The simple addition of explaining the steps for making a username and password could add an additional one to two pages I estimated in my head. Overall I enjoyed the assignment and got to order a book for one of my upcoming classes so I considered it a success.

iconic photo

http://www.nocaptionneeded.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/pub-domain-kiss-ww2-197-l.jpg

For this blog assignment I chose to write about the classic photo of a sailor returning home from world war two and embracing his, what can be assumed to be his wife, in a kiss. I chose this image because I felt most people living in America have seen this image before and also world war two was an important historic time for the United States. This image is a icon for the end of world war two.The picture was taken on August 14, 1945 in New York City's Times Square. This image appeared on the cover of Life magazine a few days after it was taken and has sense become the magazine's most reproduced photo. Although the image was not taken in color, it still has a lot of aesthetic qualities that can be talked about. The contrast between the black and white is naturally visually appealing, especially between the sailors uniform and the nurses uniform. The sailor and nurse are front in center of the photo with no obstacles covering them up. They are the first thing the viewer focuses on. The image is also a mid-action shot. You can see some people in the background mid-step while they walk. The viewer can see can see smiles on the faces of people in the background of the photo. The whole image gives a feeling of relief. Being that it was taken at the end of the war after Japans surrender that feeling of relief is very appropriate. Every American can relate to this photo. It represents a time when to serve your country in fight in the war was a honorable and respectable thing to do. The cause of fighting was just and worthy. I think that most people feel like Americans should not be at war in the middle east and that the war on terrorism has not sparked the coming together of Americans and patriotism like world war two had done. Still to this day this image is used to represent patriotism and a time of greatness for America. Fourth of July parades often recreate this image using real people dressed up to represent the sailor and nurse. In fact, roger williams university recreated this image and used it on their fourth of july day parade float and won the gold medal for it too. Statues of the image have been recreated in various parts of the country to in order to give a reminder to the individuals who see it of why we should be proud to be Americans. The identities of the sailor and nurse remain a mystery but I think that it is almost better that way. It is the image and embrace of a sailor and nurse at the end of the war that make the photo so iconic. By not knowing the identities of either person in the photo and by visually not being able to see the entirety of their faces, it allows the viewer to imagine themselves being in the photo. For guys they can picture themselves being the sailor and girls can see themselves as the nurse which is why the photo works so well as an iconic image.

story board

For the first story in this post (zombies) I decided to use the image of a man praying along with the image of the four people walking in a dusty ruins with masks on. I chose to use these two images before even thinking of a plot line because I figured the four people walking with masks on looked like they were a part of some kind of disaster which often times involves people praying. The first idea that came to mind to use for a plot line was the terrorist attack of september 11. I figured that this topic might be too emotional for some people though to use in such an assignment, especially if the images I used brought up bad memories for some people. Then I had the idea of using a zombie theme. Zombie movies and games are "big" right now and I enjoy them. I took a cause and effect approach to presenting the images. The majority of zombie films starts off with an explanation about how the zombie disease came about and was spread but sense I only had four images to work with I figured I would start with the man praying and stating that an epidemic has started to spread which is why the man is praying in the first place. Because I used a story that would take place across a large  time-line I had to explain what was going on mostly in writing while using the images to support my statements. However I also wanted people to be able to understand what was going on in the story even if the words were not next to the images and I think I did this successfully. The image of the man praying is followed by a image of a bunch of infected zombies which provides the reason for the man praying. Then the nuclear mushroom cloud is shown followed by the four guys walking in a ruined environment so the audience knows that there are still survivors who are clearly human at the end of  a tragic event.

Being a long time soccer player and fan myself, I chose to use the photo of the soccer players forming a wall for my second story. For those people who do not know, the formation the the four boys are in is called a wall and it is formed by players on defense when a player is allowed a free kick. I am pretty sure that the transitions i used in this story board are action-to-action. At first I thought that maybe the time-frame I used was too short a period of time. This is also why I thought that this story board might be considered moment-to-moment. The hardest party for me was to find images where soccer players had on generally the same colored jerseys. I did not think I could make sense of the story board without the colors remaining generally the same. The general story is that one player gets fouled and is given a penalty kick because of it. Despite the defense setting up a wall, the penalty shooter scores and wins the game for his team. The transitions I decided were more like action-to-action because I show the penalty taking place, the defense forming a wall, the shot, and the celebration of the winning team. Again I wanted to make it so that the viewer would be able to determine what is going on in the story without having to look at the descriptions next to the photos. I think I achieved this goal despite the second photo obviously containing kids much younger then in the three other photos that I used from the internet. If I could add one more photo to this group I think I would have added one of a referee signaling for a penalty kick or a scoreboard which displays the score being tied and the time being towards the remaining minuets of the game in order to show the importance of the penalty kick.

Explanation Graphic