Task 9

Task 9 - Networking Assignment

Starting this off, I looked at the data through out the week and didn't know quite what to make of it or how to manipulate it. After playing around, I found it all very unintuitive. I also wondered if all of this work was really worth it to make groupings. I also found the linking hard to follow as I found myself following lines with my finger, and then writing connections down. Then I found out how to better filter it, but still did not find it a pleasant experience.

The group I had found connections between Carlo, Marwa and Binal. We all had 3 songs in common but I had stronger connections with all of them. I had 5 common songs (though different) with Carlo and Marwa, and 7 songs in common with Binal. Before I delve deeper into those connections, I also wonder what the 'probability' of having similar songs with anyone is because of the small song list. If it is in the intend on making connections and groups, this will make it so each individual will absolutely pick a song in common with some one else. Though, 7 out of 10 songs similar to Binal stood out to me as statistically significate, and led me to read about the why behind her choices. Interestingly enough, I purposely picked songs that did not have words, though Binal did not identify that as important. That being said, we both identified emotion as a strong reason in our choices. I find it fascinating that emotion can be so subjective, and yet we both, unknowing to each other, picked many similar songs based on the 'emotion' criteria. Perhaps the songs initially curated were also picked to convey emotion, and so our choices weren't all that surprising, but it's pretty neat to find the correlation so strong. Looking at Carlo's criteria, we have 5 in common but he never mentioned the idea of emotion in his criteria. Marwa, who I also have 5 in common with, had some mention to emotion, but it was not the center the decision making process. Even more fascinating, Marwa and Carlo almost have opposite decision making process, where as Marwa wanted to be culturally and gender inclusive and yet Carlo hoped to eliminate those concepts as the listener wouldn't be aware of them. Despite these different process, they still had as many songs in common as Binal and I.

I also wonder if the songs we did not pick could also be considered connection points. Could our decisions to exclude certain songs be a connection itself? Were the group sizes predetermined? Could it be changed to be bigger/smaller and how would that change the connections? I also find it curious the top and least picked song - an interested comment on us as a group, though we all either picked it, or eliminated it, for different reasons. The music was diverse, the decision making process was diverse, and the results were diverse - much like humankind.