Overview

You are still here? Well if so, I shall tell you about the past week and what has occurred. I know that you want to know how my test was (or at least I hope you are). I think you also want to know what the prompt was. And most importantly my response to that. For the lead up to this test I also did some preparation, this included making a notes sheet, but unfortunately, I didn’t spend much time which resulted in a poor sheet.

What was completed

“Machine learning implementations provide great benefits to society.” (prompt for data science test)

Assuming that you read the line above this, you would know the prompt for my test. For this term’s extended response task, I needed to decide on how important ML is to society. I ended up saying how it is a “net benefit” for society because of all the really good things that have occurred. I did know about the issues that have occurred, but I felt that for the purposes of society, it has been remarkable.

I disused the example that Hospitals can be more intelligent and make better judgments because of a bigger database of knowledge. I also acknowledged the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal and how it not only abused data but used ML to help. And I mentioned that some people may think that it is just a new buzz word and the times without it wasn’t too bad. Even with these issues I made sure to mention that there are benefits and the world has become a better place because of its existence.

I am pretty sure this agreeing with this prompt was the expected argument, but I can see how I could have flipped my argument and said that it has caused more harm with the large amount of data. Without ML, things would be so different and it would be hard to imagine how things would have been without it.

Reflection

But still, there are serious issues that have been caused?

Yes, they have caused many issues and negatively affected society. Without using terms like “net benefit”, it is clear to see the bad stuff that has occurred. But by doing so, you miss out on seeing the things that they have also allowed like medical advancements. I believe that you might as well embrace it and try to not let the bad stuff stop you from enjoying the good things. It is easy to see the bad and forget about the good.

How did your notes sheet impact you?

You may not know that I didn’t have much notes (unless your my teacher reading this after marking the test). For your knowledge I had very little things, this made it made it hard for me to use much evidence, but I think I managed to draw upon general examples and the few things to make my point. I do now realise the importance, but I don’t think I would have gotten that many more useful points for this question (as I was thinking differently about what it was going to be about then reality).

What is your plan now?

So, I do now have a plan… This is to continue to do my projects again, which means deciding on how to do the new game(ish) project. I know what I want to do, I just need to spend the time to plan an optimised way to complete (and make it once again extensible to allow for many changes). I also want to do my other assignments because IT (/data science) isn’t my only thing to do. While I am getting some rest from the 5 tests (yes, it is a lot for 4 days), I also need to prepare for the AST (as mentioned in web dev).