I think I finally understand why our technician can be such a pain sometimes. I've always thought that his job is there to help the rest of us, provide technical support, and hence he should be helpful and approachable. In other words, I thought he's there to make our lives easier. Now, I understand the other side of it. He's bitchy because we're making his life harder, if not more annoying. I was definitely enlightened after a short talk with this other grad student whom I was analyzing her data for the nth times: (note the * are like spicy ratings on a menu, except this mark how close I am to the edge of bursting into flames).
Me: So, you'd want me to fix the adult data as well?
Her: Yeah, I think if you've already fix the children data, you should fix the adult data as well, else it'd be hard for me to explain why some data are corrected and some aren't...
Me: But they make sense, maybe a little bit smaller, but is around ball park value..
Her: Yeah.. they are a bit small, but some are too large, like in case XX....
Me: Ok.. but you do realize that if I correct it with a factor then the ones that are large will be even larger?
Her: Um.... let me see... for that adult, first set of data looks reasonable, the third is a bit large... oh, but we're going to eliminate it anyways... but the rest are all a bit small. **
Me: Ok, so first set of data for that adult is reasonable, you still want me to fix it as well?
Her: Oh.. but you're gonna fix the rest then sure, might as well. *****
Me: Alright, but it's not fishy to you that all the adults data have to scale up and all the kids data should be scale down if they are recorded on the same day, and the errors are caused by hardware problems?
Her: ...Frankly... a little, but Carol (her boss) sounds like she knows what she's talking about... so I'm just going by her... I don't really know what's wrong with the hardware... (*****)
Me: Ok. Just one last thing out of curiousity, why do you want the Y-axis scale to be the same on all conditions? I can understand it's needed for each condition across subjects for comparison, but why across all conditions?
Her: Oh... it's just so that you know... if my committee wanted to compared whatever across different conditions and different subjects....
Me: I see. (Then your committee can read the damn axis.)
I think it's good to be cautious about your work, if you're the one working on it. Making other ppl to do things that doesn't really have to be done is annoying. Making them do it more than 2 times even more so. Making it sounded like it is just a matter of convenience is worthy of me saying things that I won't say in public. Should I ask? You don't care what's wrong with your data but you care about the committee asking why the axis are not the same on all graphs? And no, the level of annoyance does not go down with more utterance of 'thank you'. Coz if that works, I should be able to walk a dog on the street and say, "Oh... can you pick up my dog poo? Thank you so much... I know you must not like this...really, thank you..." Only one thing crossed my mind: this avatar I've seen that says "JFC", it looks like the KFC logo, but of course good old colonel is replaced with someone much more famous.
Me: So, you'd want me to fix the adult data as well?
Her: Yeah, I think if you've already fix the children data, you should fix the adult data as well, else it'd be hard for me to explain why some data are corrected and some aren't...
Me: But they make sense, maybe a little bit smaller, but is around ball park value..
Her: Yeah.. they are a bit small, but some are too large, like in case XX....
Me: Ok.. but you do realize that if I correct it with a factor then the ones that are large will be even larger?
Her: Um.... let me see... for that adult, first set of data looks reasonable, the third is a bit large... oh, but we're going to eliminate it anyways... but the rest are all a bit small. **
Me: Ok, so first set of data for that adult is reasonable, you still want me to fix it as well?
Her: Oh.. but you're gonna fix the rest then sure, might as well. *****
Me: Alright, but it's not fishy to you that all the adults data have to scale up and all the kids data should be scale down if they are recorded on the same day, and the errors are caused by hardware problems?
Her: ...Frankly... a little, but Carol (her boss) sounds like she knows what she's talking about... so I'm just going by her... I don't really know what's wrong with the hardware... (*****)
Me: Ok. Just one last thing out of curiousity, why do you want the Y-axis scale to be the same on all conditions? I can understand it's needed for each condition across subjects for comparison, but why across all conditions?
Her: Oh... it's just so that you know... if my committee wanted to compared whatever across different conditions and different subjects....
Me: I see. (Then your committee can read the damn axis.)
I think it's good to be cautious about your work, if you're the one working on it. Making other ppl to do things that doesn't really have to be done is annoying. Making them do it more than 2 times even more so. Making it sounded like it is just a matter of convenience is worthy of me saying things that I won't say in public. Should I ask? You don't care what's wrong with your data but you care about the committee asking why the axis are not the same on all graphs? And no, the level of annoyance does not go down with more utterance of 'thank you'. Coz if that works, I should be able to walk a dog on the street and say, "Oh... can you pick up my dog poo? Thank you so much... I know you must not like this...really, thank you..." Only one thing crossed my mind: this avatar I've seen that says "JFC", it looks like the KFC logo, but of course good old colonel is replaced with someone much more famous.
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