For me it would be when I got to visit one of our clinical trial sites and see how they collect the patient’s data during a trial that I then get to analyse. It really helped to put what I do with the data into perspective.
Wow good question, and so difficult to answer. I will go with something one of my colleagues showed that we can find penguin colonies in the Antarctic by seeing their poo from Space.
Emperor penguins breed all around the Antarctic a huge area and in places that are very difficult to get to. So my colleague worked out that he could use pictures taken from satellites in space. Whilst the penguins were too small to be seem on these images he could see the mess they made. The more penguins there are the bigger the mess. We discovered lots of new areas where the penguins were using this method. Simple but brilliant and one of the things I love about science.
Hmm this is a really good question, but definitely one that’s difficult to answer. I feel like I learn something new every day! The most interesting thing I’ve learned on my current project though, is how to analyse qualitative data. So data can either be quantitative (numbers), or qualitative (in my case, words from interviews), being able to unpick what people have said in interviews and why is so interesting, and probably one of my favourite things about my job 🙂
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