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What is evidence? Thinking about Serial and science

What is evidence? In science, usually we think of evidence as a collection of the observations, measurements, and results of data analysis from an investigation of a phenomenon. But I think evidence isn’t just a set of these measurements. In order for it to be evidence and not just data, there also needs to be information about its relevance and appropriateness to answering a question or a claim. You can think of good evidence (data that was collected in a careful and thoughtful way and that supports your claim) or bad evidence (sloppily collected data, incomplete data, and/or data that doesn’t support your claim).

The podcast Serial came up during one of my research meetings today. We were talking through a transcript of a middle school science classroom and debating whether or not to apply one of codes to a particular utterance the teacher made. The topic of evidence was brought up and it made me think of Serial and how evidence is discussed on the show and how it is similar in a lot of ways to how we want students to talk about evidence in their science classes.
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Zelda Speed Runs

Over the summer I got really interested in video game speed runs. Specifically speed runs of Legend of Zelda games. I had known that this was a thing, but it had never caught my fascination before. Speed running, for those of you not familiar, is when you try to play a game as fast as possible. In many ways this is analogous to high score records in other video games (this is especially true with older arcade games – think of the documentary King of Kong about Donkey Kong players), but since Zelda games don’t have a score, players instead compete to see who can complete the game the fastest. Before I started watching speed runs, I had an impression that the players might be similar to those depicted in the King of Kong movie: obsessed, secretive, and ultra-competitive. But I found something very different.

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Disneyland

Yesterday I spent all day at Disneyland (and California Adventure) with my brother and my two oldest cousins (on my mom’s side of the family). We had SO MUCH FUN. I am so completely exhausted today and my entire body hurts but it was totally worth it. (I also broke my one-day FitBit record yesterday and got 30,000 steps – about 13 miles.) Somehow, with a little bit of planning and a lot of luck and endurance, we were able to execute a nearly perfect Disneyland day. And this is saying something, especially since we went on a Saturday which was also the same day as a 5k/half-marathon at the park and the first weekend of the winter/holiday decorations (and also we got a slow start to the day). We went on 23 rides. That is a lot. We gamed the system a bit, took full advantage of the FastPasses, and were quick and nimble with our decision making.

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Trivia!

I flew down to LA today (SJC -> BUR is the only way to go in my opinion) and spent part of the afternoon watching Jeopardy! with my dad. We got all caught up on this week’s Tournament of Champions and it reminded me of when we used to watch it together. I told him that we used to have our own competitions at home and he would pay me ten cents for every answer that I got right before him. He doesn’t remember this at all. Well, I remember it and it instilled in me a love of trivia and also trivia competitions.

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some thoughts on Interstellar

So I went to go see Interstellar tonight. Oh, SPOILERS throughout, so only read on if you don’t plan on seeing it or don’t care too much about that kind of thing. I normally hate spoilers, but I went into this with the main conceit spoiled and I don’t think it really ruined it, per se. In general, I have really mixed feelings about the movie. There were parts I liked and parts that I couldn’t help but roll my eyes at. And it was really long.
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Birds of Paradise with a hummingbird

I was at the Getty Center Museum in LA last November around sunset and I found this big patch of birds of paradise near the edge overlooking the ocean. It was so beautiful and the light was so perfect with all of the colors. And then a hummingbird showed up and it made my day. The hummingbird definitely upped the level of difficulty, but it was a nice challenge. I got a couple good action shots of the hummingbird. Some of my favorite shots from the outing are below:

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Chile: Part 3

If you somehow missed parts 1 and 2, I would highly suggest reading those first: Part 1 and Part 2.

Santiago

After our adventures in Patagonia, we flew back to Santiago and found our apartment/hotel in the Providencia area of the city. It was pretty nice. We got ready to go out for dinner that night and had a bit of a tough time because it was election day in Chile and many of the restaurants were closed (something about not being able to serve alcohol on election day – thank goodness we don’t have that here!). But we managed to find a place that was open and met some of Katie’s friends there. We took the metro to Tiramisu, a very popular local restaurant that had delicious pizza and lots of wine and gelato (yes, I know I was in Chile and not Italy – we didn’t have a lot of options). It was an enjoyable and relaxing, and a good break from the last few days of crazy adventures.
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Chile: Part 2

If you skipped part one, you really shouldn’t have. Catch up here: Part 1.

After our two nights in the Elqui Valley, we headed back to La Serena and flew down to Punta Arenas to begin the next phase of our adventure.

Punta Arenas

We got in fairly late that day and got to our hostel (Hostal Fitz Roy) in Punta Arenas. The hostel was alright; we had our own little 5-person cabin at the back of the property. It was cozy but it took us a while to figure out how the heat worked. And, oh yeah, since we were in Punta Arenas now and basically as close to Antarctica as you can get without actually being in Antarctica, it was very cold even though it was spring (November). Breakfast at the hostel was typical chile: toast with jam, meat & cheese, tea or Nescafe “coffee”1, and some weird almost-orange juice.
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