Persuasion through Visualization

Although it's taken me a few days to make this post, I knew what I wanted to talk about as soon as I read the blog question for this week. It's been five years, but I was so struck by the effective use of statistics and visualization that I remembered these maps right away. I'm talking about images produced by Mark Newman in response to U.S. voters who were baffled by the contradiction between the voting outcome maps after the presidential election, and the voting numbers. At the time, many voters who favoured the Republican party claimed that the majority of the U.S. was red on election maps, and that small states had disproportionately large numbers of votes, unfairly swaying the election toward a Democratic outcome. This represents an essentially flawed understanding of the statistics that come out of elections, the set-up of voting regions, and the meaning of the U.S. electoral college. People could have debated for a long time as to why citizens didn't understand the election process or returns, or argued endlessly over numerical data. But in the end, many people simply can't conceive of what numbers mean, and the bias against "word problems" in math shows that turning the statistics into sentences isn't much help. For many people, seeing is believing, and graphical displays of data are what truly bring home the point of a study or article. Newman's illustrations make it incredibly clear why the election gave the result that it did, and why electoral seats are distributed as they are, more easily than pages of explanation could have done. While I've seen many interesting infographics in the years since, that series of maps has stuck with me since 2008.

References
Newman, M. E. J. (2008, November 11). Beyond Red and Blue: 7 Ways to View the Presidential Election Map. Scientific American.

The best stats you've ever seen

I am really glad that data visualization is the topic for this week's blog post because a few weeks ago I saw Hans Rosling's TED talk called The best stats you've ever seen, and he presented that best statistics I have ever seen! I urge anyone who reads this post to watch this TED talk because it is amazing, but if you do not have the time, I will briefly discuss why I think it was so amazing. The main reason why I respect this video is that Rosling adds time to his presentation, so he can illustrate how it is difficult to generalize findings. For example, in the 1960s life expectancy for people living in China was extremely low comparing to the life expectancy of people living in Canada, but now the life expectancy of people living in China is almost equivalent to people living in Canada.

As I watched this presentation, I became so engrossed that I even wished to watch some parts again, thankfully Rosling responded to my wish with some instant replays, see image.


On the other hand, someone could argue that adding time to the presentation of statistics is either not relevant to certain types of research or not a feasible option for many researchers. I do understand the merit of these two objections but I want to be a salsa dancing researcher who welcomes complexity like a hot shower after a bike ride home in the rain. To put my response more practically, I think adding the complexity of history will help frame any research question and videos of statistics like Rosling's video will be welcome at any conference.

References

Rosling, H. (2006, June). Hans Rosling: The best stats you've ever seen [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen.html 

Week 8

As Dr.Galey mentioned in his post, only some things can be known in numbers. One, or I should rather say, a group of statistics that has stuck with me surround the increased rates of childhood and adolescent obesity in North America from the past 10 years. I came across this American report at work which discusses the relationship between Outdoor Recreation, Heath, and Wellness and how to enhance it through rec programs directed at children. Approximately 8 million children are overweight and obesity rates have doubled in the past two decades. Studies show childhood obesity contributes to an array of life long health problems and poor emotional wellbeing. One solution to this problem is increased emphasis on physical activity and nutrition in rec programs as well as more time spent outdoors. Studies show the earlier children are exposed to healthy lifestyle habits their chances of becoming obese amongst many other negative effects are significantly decreased. Without monitoring health and crunching numbers we would not know how widespread this issue is. One of the ways this study was done to humanize it was through the help of visual aids detailing effects and videos of educational and fitness seminars with certain demographics.

I think much like Luker’s text tries to drive home, good research should try to find a sweet spot between qualitative and quantitive information. Depending on the audience this may be a good starting point to attract readers who may not necessarily read the study due to a lack of familiarity with statistical information. Humanizing information, depending on the subject, also shows a degree of respect and allows subjects dignity. Finally, in terms of a possible proposal or grant, finding this balance may be a useful selling point to capture the interest of those who may only skim over your proposal.

El-Ahrairah and Hriaroo…

While not exactly a statistic, this week's blog question – relating to counting and observation – did remind me of something that I read a long time ago that has stuck with me.  One of my favourite books is Watership Down by Richard Adams.  If you have not read it, it is a very nice book about some bunnies that go on a grand adventure.  Honestly, it is a great book.

One of the reasons the book is interesting is for some of the concepts and words that are introduced.  For example, the rabbits in the novel have a word for being paralyzed with fear – "tharn" – that really captures that feeling better than any English word I can think of.  I also remember in the book "The Stand", Stephen King uses "tharn", and discuses how well it captures that feeling of being like a deer in the headlights. 

But the word and concept from Watership Down that this week's blogging question reminded of is "hrair": which is the rabbit's word for any number that is greater than five.  So it can mean "five" or "five thousand".  The reason for this is that the rabbits in the book do not have the concept of any number greater than four. Like the Sherlock Holmes quote in the blogging question, they can see numbers greater than four, but they have no way to really observe them.

It has stuck with me because I have come to believe that the concept of "hrair" is something that is not unique to the fictional rabbits in the book.  I have heard that there are some languages that do not use numbers, but concepts of "many" and "few".  But more than that, I think that most people are not really able to intuitively understand numbers.  Yes, we can discuss them as concepts, but it is difficult for us to really visualize and understand numbers.  I have a suspicion that they may be a sort of social construct.  To really understand what the difference between five thousand or five million is something that is, I believe, not actually grasped by most people.

I would be curious to know what the limits are to human understanding of numbers; if we are like the rabbits and cannot really comprehend numbers greater than four.  I might consider making this into a research project (either as an experiment, or to see if it has been done before). This is especially so 
after the results of the first assignment; I think I need to change my research direction from my first paper.  The final paper for this class has me feeling a bit tharn :)

Data Visualization and Statistics

In spite of my fondness for words, I also can’t get enough of great infographs.  Their effectiveness is well-documented (here, for instance, is a great example – an infograph about infographs! http://visual.ly/13-reasons-your-brain-craves-infographics?view=true), but I think that the reason I like them is because they seem to occupy a middle ground between completely removed learning (for example, reading about history in a book), and more experiential learning (for example, learning about history through being able to physically interact with artifacts from the time period).  While you can’t really reach out and touch infographs, they do provide a way to absorb information more directly, and in a way that seems to stick in the brain.  Even if the information that’s being communicated is complex, I seem to have an easier time remembering it when I picture the (often simple) graphic. 

Here are a couple of my favourites:

http://hint.fm/wind/

http://twistedsifter.com/2013/08/maps-that-will-help-you-make-sense-of-the-world/

http://visual.ly/tea-biscuit-guide

Statistics also seem to have been embraced by the internet in the form of popular blogs.  And I must admit, I often find myself procrastinating by casually clicking through lists like this one: http://www.cracked.com/photoplasty_550_16-shocking-statistics-youll-wish-were-made-up/.   Statistics, by their very nature, tend to be somewhat shocking, but I’m almost starting to feel like I’ve become desensitized to a lot of statistics, as a result of their ubiquity on the internet. 

Out in left field

The “field” in my research will be in two settings: online and in private dwellings.

As I am investigating online communities, I will need to observe behaviours in an online space.  If I were to take an ethnographic approach, I could embed myself in a particular community (or two) to observe it from within for a period of time.

As my research question concerns spending and economy (to what extent do online communities displace capital activity?), an individual approach is also necessary; what is the measurable impact to persons within the online community?  Using Jenna Hartel’s gourmet cooking study as a model, the field in this case could be an individual’s home living space.  Household engagement in hobbies like gardening and cooking could be observed, described, and considered as cases of the larger study.

Hartel, J. (2010). Managing documents at home for serious leisure: A case study of the hobby of gourmet cooking. Journal of Documentation, 66(6), 847-874.

Having a Field Day

Thinking about the nature of field work with respect to information studies, I was reminded of an article I read for another class (INF1001), by Susan Leigh Star. In "The Ethnography of Infrastructure", Star writes about ways in the design and implementation of information infrastructure (for example, a computer system) affects people differently, resulting in varied meanings, uses, and interpretations, and ultimately functioning as a relationship.

Star reveals ways in which information infrastructure and systems (which she describes as "boring things") can result in some fascinating applications. I think fieldwork within the scope of information studies can manifest in surprising ways, including examining what appear to be very mundane, ordinary aspects of the functioning of a workplace, school, or even home. As Star's research demonstrates, these areas of study can contribute to profound insight into human interaction.

For example, Star identifies how hierarchies and master narratives can be found in information systems. She discusses medical history forms for women that prescribe monogamous heterosexuality, with space on the page for "maiden name" and "husband's name", etc. (Star, 1999, pg. 385).  She is also interested in the invisible elements of an infrastructure, such as the people who might not be considered essential in a workplace, school, or other institution: "I had originally wanted to include secretaries...this was strongly resisted by both biologists and systems developers, as they did not see the secretaries as doing real science" (Star, 1999, pg. 386).

Star's fieldwork included immersion in the work practices of a group of biologists and a group computer scientists. From this experience, two key characteristics reflect notable features of information infrastructure, including its development out of a history of practice (for example, certain standards in a workplace could dictate the appropriate way to send an e-mail; a particular vocabulary might only be available computer scientists or biologists; and or other conventions, like the use of the QWERTY keyboard), and the method in which it becomes visible upon a breakdown (such as with a power outage) (Star, 1999, pg. 385).  Star's focus on these invisible, normalized aspects of information structures demonstrate that fieldwork within the area of information studies can sometimes involve examining relationships which already exist and function, but which may not have been worthy of analysis or study before.

References

Star, Susan Leigh. (November 1999). The Ethnography of Infrastructure. American Behavioral Scientist, 43(3), 377-391

On the Archive & Praxis

Like Prof. Alan Galey, my fieldwork space, the archive, is the seeming anti-thesis to the field (galeyinf1240.blogspot.ca/2013/10/week-6-follow-up-and-week-7-blogging.html). I anticipate for my research project to scour the archives of cultural institutions, publishing houses and newspapers across Beirut. In this space, I too hope to be surprised and illuminated (ibid). Yet in a sense, all of Beirut is my fieldwork space, since my research concerns a phenomenon whose history is inextricably tied to that of Lebanon’s ancient capital. The archives I will be visiting will take me from one end of Beirut to the other, as I examine the social and cultural networks of the print culture I am studying. In a sense, I will be physically retracing these relationships, crossing streets and climbing stairwells that many Shi’r’s poets once crossed and climbed in bygone times. Or, put another way, one can conceptualize the entirety of Beirut as one core component of the much larger and fluid Shi’r Archive. One can extend the parameters of that Archive even further, beyond Beirut; and imagine it stretching past the coast and over the mountains in all directions until it encompasses the entire world. For the Archive, in Derrida’s sense, is a totality far greater than any one repository can contain (Brothman, 1999). Hence, the Shi’r Archive includes not only the official repositories with cultural and other institutions, but also all the places the poets gathered; where each of them drank coffee or played as a child; the people they spoke to or the readers they inspired; and even perhaps the personal archive of a scholar in New York or Johannesburg that contains related materials.

Here, I have in mind the book A Prisoner in the Garden that I am currently reading in preparing my final research proposal, and that is about an archival exhibition in Johannesburg with the same name. This beautifully illustrated book by the Nelson Mandela Foundation documents that exhibition project, which was run by the Foundation’s Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory and Commemoration (with Verne Harris was the project manager). The following passage in particular is relevant to my discussion here:

“The very idea of the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory and Commemoration suggests a Mandela Archive. But whereas a conventional archive has a single location and a finite number of documents, the Mandela Archive is an infinite one, located in innumerable places. It is also not confined to documents, but includes sites, landscapes, material objects, performances, photographs, artworks, stories and the memories of individuals.

“The list is endless, and the full scope of the Mandela Archive is difficult to comprehend. […] No listing of the Mandela Archive can, however, be considered complete or do more than suggest the enormity of its scope and complexity. […] The Mandela Archive connects to a host of other archives in powerful ways. While necessarily focusing on Mandela, it also embraces other elements of history of which he has become a symbol. […] Mandela’s personal history is also that of not only his close comrades, but all who identified with the struggles against apartheid, and is echoed in all the records they generated, in their many and varied forms.” (2005, 35-36)

This passage encourages us, like Derrida did, to think in new ways about the archive as a site of memory and scholarship. It also inspires thoughts about the complex and myriad connections between what things that may appear as disparate and unrelated at first, but are in fact ultimately connected. In studying social phenomena, however, we must draw the line somewhere, establishing the boundaries of our inquiry so that it is manageable. One cannot study all things at once. Yet it is important to remember that wherever that line is drawn, always there are connections, relationships, voices and facets that are left unaccounted for in any research project. I think that is a humbling but constructive idea to keep in mind as one undertakes research. (As an aside, the organization subsequently shortened its name to the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory.)

On a slightly different note, one of my favourite articles about research, including fieldwork, concerns its potential to challenge scholars to confront their assumptions, and engage with the subject of their study (ibid). This well-known article was written by noted critical scholar, Patti Lather (1986). In it, she defines the concept of “research praxis” as she examines the methodological implications of critical theory. Lather’s article highlights the potential of field research, when designed critically, to advance emancipatory knowledge. One of my favourite parts of the article is the following:

“Reciprocity in research design is a matter of both intent and degree. Regarding intent, reciprocity has long been recognized as a valuable condition of research fieldwork, for it has been found to create conditions which generate rich data (Wax, 1952). Everhart (1977), for example, presents reciprocity as "an excellent data gathering technique" (p. 10) because the researcher moves from the status of stranger to friend and thus is able to gather personal knowledge from subjects more easily. […] I argue that we must go beyond the concern for more and better data to a concern for research as praxis. What I suggest is that we consciously use our research to help participants understand and change their situations.” (ibid, 263)

Hence, Lather is concerned with the democratization of the research process, and conducting fieldwork in a manner that empowers both scholar and, as applicable, research subjects. These research ideas interest me, as I continue developing my project and its methods.

References

Brothman, Brien. (Fall 1999). Declining Derrida: Integrity, Tensegrity, and the Preservation of         
         Archives from Deconstruction. Archivaria 48: 64-88.    

Lather, Patti. (Fall 1986). Research as Praxis. Harvard Educational Review 56(3): 257-278.    

Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory. (2005) A Prisoner in The Garden. New York, New York: 
          Viking Studio.  

Cynthia Dempster's Field

I have been developing here on the blog a proposal for research in a piano studio.  The piano studio that I work in is not far away. It is not a distant or new field. However, from the point of view of knowledge, my research may open up new vistas.  I have done field research.   I wrote a novel about a homeless teenager.  When I researched the book,  I spent a lot of time in the parks and talked to young people living on the streets.  In this context, there were ethical issues that concerned me the researcher.  I needed to protect myself.  I needed to make sure I didn't stay too late or go anyplace too dangerous.  I also needed to protect my own privacy.  I didn't give out my own name or discuss the fact that I was researching a novel.  I also developed the characters before going out in the field to do the research.  I invented the characters.  I did not think it would be ethical to model any of the characters on the young people I was meeting.  It would be interesting to develop an academic research project on homeless teenagers and compare how field work would be planned and accomplished.  

Woah, my field is immense

Even though I am conducting interviews for my research project, I have not thought of what the field for my subject of research--audiobooks--should be or where I should conduct these interviews. After hearing Professor Hartel's lecture I started to feel overwhelmed because people who have mp3 players can listen to audiobooks anywhere! Also, I suspect that many people who listen to audiobooks use the internet to access them, rather than borrowing CDs or cassettes from the library. These new aspects that I have to consider for my research are overwhelming me but are also exciting me because I can imagine someone on their computer showing me their audiobook collection with glee just like Professor Hartel's participants were happy to show her their cookbook collections (2010). One quasi-solution to the overwhelming scope of my research topic is to interview people in the library where the interviewee can choose the location to conduct the interview. To illustrate, if the interviewee regularly borrows audiobooks in CD format, then we could go to that section and I could take pictures of that area while we interview. Similarly, if the interviewee mostly borrows audiobooks in

mp3 format, then we could go to a computer, where I can take screen shots of the interviewee using audiobook applications and websites. Overall, I am excited that I am learning, in their basic form, some ethnographic tools to both complicate and enhance my research project.

References

Hartel, J. (2010). Managing documents at home for serious leisure: A case study of the hobby of gourmet cooking. Journal of Documentation, 66(6), 847-874.

Roosen, J (Photographer). (2008). Walk [Photograph]. Retrieved October 25, 2013 from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/joeproosen/

Notes on Fieldwork from the Mud

My ideas about field work mostly come from my experiences in studying Biology during my undergraduate degree. It's possible my ideas of what makes something the field are more traditional because of this, but for me they're tied up in ideas of both location and the ability to control variables.

Most of my courses had a laboratory component of some kind. Most of those courses involved working in a lab to dissect a specimen and observe it, or examine some slides in a microscope, or occasionally follow experimental procedures. However, the course that made the greatest impression on me was Plant Functional Ecology, a field ecology course, which involved bi-weekly visits to different forests and fields set aside for study.

In all cases the experiments and procedures followed in my courses were long-established, traditional methodologies. In each case, a certain result was expected, as undergraduate labs are designed around well known information. And in all cases, unexpected variations occurred. In a dissection laboratory, a fish might unexpectedly have been pregnant, altering the observed anatomy. An ill-prepared slide may be hard to observe. A chemical reaction might not occur to the expected degree. The nature of experimentation, especially when performed by inexperienced and tired undergrads, leads to such incidents, and it's part of the process to examine research after the fact and look at what may have caused the observed results, either as false positives or as unexpected negatives.

However, the main thing I learned in doing field work in the sciences is that there is much more unpredictability and variation in the field. This may seem obvious in retrospect, but until I tried to explain why species abundances along a gradient tract refused to match an expected curve I don't think I really understood the difference between the controlled conditions of a laboratory experiment and the infinite uncontrolled variables out in the field.

This might all seem hard to apply to information research, because knowledge work and libraries are so far removed from the muddy work of field ecology. However, I think the major take away for me about the difference between field and non-field experiments was that in the field, rather than controlling variables we accounted for their uncontrolled nature, or controlled them artificially through sampling.

Another blog entry this week mentioned usability testing as field work, but working from my own experience - both in ecology and in usability testing - I think I would challenge that assertion. Traditionally, usability testing is done in a usability lab under controlled conditions, where a member of a user group is given precise, artificial tasks to complete. Their attempts are observed and their reactions to the process are recorded. This is clearly an experiment intended to get as close as possible to the actual user experience in the field, when the product is "live", but it isn't truly in the field. The user comes to the lab - again, traditionally. In some cases the usability team does in fact relocate to the user's home environment, and that may be close to a field study, but the tasks are still inorganically initiated, and they occur outside of the real framework they would be completed in.

In my research project, I'm focusing on the research approaches taken by undergraduate students exposed for the first time to medieval manuscripts. My study will occur in the field, as the subjects will be students of an actual course and will be approaching their research for the purpose of the course. While I intend to use usability-style post-task questionnaires and procedures as part of my methodology, I wouldn't consider my study one that uses usability methodology because the "tasks" will be much less controlled - they will simply be defined as the research procedures involved in completing the course.

I may be coming off as a bit of a field research snob here, but what I think is important to remember is that a lot of very valuable and important research occurs far, far away from the field. Field research is unpredictable and messy, and useful for exploring new research areas or developing new theories, but without controlled replication and determination of causation nothing can ever come of those theories. Pursuit of knowledge for the sake of knowledge is wonderful, but the real value of research is the ultimate benefits it can have for those outside of academia once it becomes actionable.

Hands dirty, feet wet...

I am completely in agreement that in order to conduct a study, especially one with an ethnographic component, you need to go out into the field and immerse yourself in the activities and settings of the people and processes that you are looking to investigate.

I think that real, first-hand perspective about the subject of one's research often provides a framework for uncovering insights that could not be possible in the library or in front of a computer. It is that tangible, experiential quality of being in the field that allows for this and these realizations are, a lot of the time, in the moment and not the result of time spent in reflection or analysis.

As a good chunk of my research is going to involve ethnographically studying MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) environments, MOOC takers and their motivations and frustrations, I was compelled to look up some interesting applications of ethnographic research to virtual communities and interactions. Hancock et al. [1] and Paccagnella [2] suggest some useful strategies for virtual community research and observation and also touch upon the implications of their findings for educational environment design.

This article by Margaret Weigl provides an excellent summary of some of the most comprehensive research efforts in the online learning space, pertinent to MOOCs. One of these studies [3] carries out a decent ethnographic examination of motivation/procrastination issues during the online learning experience of a course offered on Moodle (Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment). I am definitely going to use some aspects of the study as inspiration for my own.

The only prior experience with 'fieldwork' that I've had is running usability studies on beta participants for an iPhone app developed by a start-up that I was working for at the time. I got a sense of the first time user experience in the users' native environments (as much as that could be simulated). This was great as it allowed us to record a number of useful observations and then use these to further prototype and  iterate on our designs. I will definitely be drawing of some of this experience in my own study but I intend for it to be even more immersive than a usability experiment. To understand a  MOOC taker's thought process and understand motivation issues from their point of view, one needs conduct personalized, unbiased interviews, monitor and analyze relevant data and really be a 'fly on the wall' observing in as true a setting as possible. Need to start figuring out how best to do that.

REFERENCES:

1. Hancock, R., Crain-Dorough, M., Parton, B., & Oescher, J. (2010). Understanding and Using Virtual Ethnography in Virtual Environments.Handbook of Research on Methods and Techniques for Studying Virtual Communities: Paradigms and Phenomena, 1, 457.
2. Paccagnella, L. (1997). Getting the seats of your pants dirty: Strategies for ethnographic research on virtual communities. Journal of Computer‐Mediated Communication, 3(1), 0-0.
3. Michinov, N., Brunot, S., Le Bohec, O., Juhel, J., & Delaval, M. (2011). Procrastination, participation, and performance in online learning environments.Computers & Education, 56(1), 243-252.

Field Work

My research project will require a fair amount of field work, as the goal is to interview individuals to record their personal histories in relation to a specific Toronto landmark or neighbourhood.  I think what attracts me to oral history (as opposed to a more traditional, canonized-in-textbooks kind of history) in general is its sense of immediacy, which seems to align itself rather naturally with the idea that knowledge gained from fieldwork is somehow more ‘real’ than information you might gather in a library.  It reminds me of a similar distinction between, say, film and theatre.  Both can certainly teach you things, and both can have a visceral effect on the viewer.  But I’ve always found that truly well-crafted theatre can jolt me in a way that film cannot, and I think that this has a lot to do with the act of watching real people, in real time, participate in the action that’s unfolding before you.  It carries that same sense of immediacy, of intimacy, of being directly involved with what’s at stake, that seems to also attract people to work in ‘the field.’

None of my previous academic endeavours have involved any fieldwork, so I’m excited to approach a project from this perspective.  Though I suspect that one of the most disappointing parts of this course might be the fact that I won’t actually be able to follow through on this research proposal.  I also haven’t really conducted any official field work in any of my professional experience, though I suppose I have participated in some less formal variations of the practice.  For instance, when I lived in Scotland, I helped to run a recurring experimental theatre night, where members of the public would come to watch theatrical works in progress.  The point of the event was to get some feedback from the audience in order to refine the works, but people were not initially forthcoming with their comments, and asking general questions as the audience left the theatre did not yield any helpful information.  We eventually resorted to handing out blank sheets of paper, and encouraged people to provide constructive comments on each performance, and we promised free drinks tickets to anyone who filled up both sides of the page.  Soon enough, we were handing out extra sheets of paper and the responses rolled in.  And for the most part, the comments were thoughtful and incisive.  It was by far the most effective form of survey I’ve ever participated in, though I’d imagine that the offer of alcohol as a reward might not fly in academic research circles.

My definition of fieldwork…

Though I am not sure in what field I am studying, I can give a loose definition of what I consider fieldwork in information science based on my own habits and preferences for my research.  For me, fieldwork has to contain some element of human interaction.  Reading materials are a good way to have convenient access to information on a wide variety of subjects, but there is only so much you can learn from reading.  I think this is at the heart of Park's point about fieldwork.  That merely examining the subject through the observations of others in print is only one way to approach fieldwork.  And that going to the source of the information will help you examine the research in a new way.

The other reason I single out human interaction as being fieldwork is because it fits best with my own habits and preferences.  Information, and books in particular, are all created by people, and I think that sometimes rather than reading a book on a particular subject, it is better to go and talk to an expert in the area that you are interested in.  I try to do this as often as I can when I want to know about a subject, or I have a particular question.  I find that getting an answer, or a lecture, from a person who is knowledgeable about something is the most enlightening type of information.  I have been known to call, or to travel somewhere, to speak to someone in order to have one question answered.  It is not always the most efficient method (especially in my example of needing one question answered), but the advantage I get from it is that I can ask further questions to clarify, and that I can hold greater confidence in the information that I get.  We live in an age that has an abundance of information that is easily accessible, but without any guarantees to the quality of the information.  Asking a person directly is a good method to practice because it allows you to put a name and a face to the information that you collect; rather than dealing with the uncertainty of online sources.