Back to Square One: Conducting Experiments

       Programmers strive in understanding and applying math and algorithms to make their jobs and lives of other around them easier. I myself feel this way, however there is one skill that majority of programmers lack in as they become more proficient in coding. Writing is something that everyone should be experienced in, but this is not the case for programmers. Our jobs usually have us sitting in front of a computer revising code or creating programs or new processes. Since we are exposed to this lifestyle, we tend to have sudden decrease in writing proficiency. I have fallen victim to this stereotype myself. I even took an advance composition class, and even though I have regained my writing skills, it is far more different than writing a research paper.

       
        After my meeting with Joshua and Dr. Xie, I realized that all of the work that I drafted for the research paper is not the right direction. Dr. Xie mentioned that we had to approach this paper in a more scientific fashion. This means that we needed to create a paper that revolved around the concept of formulating a hypothesis and then carry out an experiment. I believe the last time that I have written a paper in this manner had to be my senior year of high school. Other than that, I have been writing papers in an essay format. Getting myself accustomed to writing in this format has been rather tough for me, but at the same time it has made me more curious and interested in my research. I actually have more enthusiasm in my work because it is forcing me to become more of a critical thinker. With that being said, my research does not stop when a hypothesis turns out to be incorrect, it only goes forward from there by asking the question, "Why?". With deadlines coming up, this will be a challenging few days, but will all be worth it in the end.