Day in the life of a research assistant & PhD student

TL;DR

Follow a research assistant's day from data analysis to statistical testing in a busy office setting.

Transcript

again done this represents okay so for what's down in the background i got up at 845 instead of seven so i'm going to go to the wework office a little bit later do some work downstairs to start with see ya hey this is actually a piece of art you know this piece of toast that i bought look at one dad's shoes it looks like they have no friends i didn... Read More

Key Insights

• 👨‍🔬 Research assistants handle diverse tasks from data analysis to testing software.
• ❓ Challenges arise in software choice and data visualization for accurate representation.
• 💦 Valuable skills in descriptive statistics and data cleaning are essential for research work.
• 👨‍🔬 Balancing methods writing and data cleaning is crucial in research projects.
• 😀 Testing precision and recall in natural language apps is key to data extraction accuracy.
• 👨‍🔬 Collaboration with peers and leveraging software tools enhances research efficiency.
• 🧑‍💼 Work-life balance considerations for research assistants are necessary during long office hours.

Questions & Answers

Q: What tasks does the research assistant undertake in the office?

The research assistant conducts descriptive statistics on domestic violence data and tests natural language processing apps for healthcare records extraction.

Q: What challenges does the research assistant face with statistical software?

The research assistant struggles with the decision between using SPSS and RStudio due to the complexity of the data and learning curve of RStudio.

Q: How does the research assistant plan to enhance data visualization?

The research assistant considers using Prism to create visually appealing graphs for the descriptive statistics, aiming to make the data more accessible and understandable.

Q: What is the research assistant's approach to testing the precision of the natural language processing apps?

The research assistant measures precision and recall to assess the apps' accuracy in extracting specific data points from healthcare records.

Summary & Key Takeaways

• Research assistant prepares for the day, heading to the office to conduct descriptive statistics on domestic violence data.

• Tasked with testing natural language processing apps for extracting data from healthcare records.

• Completing data cleaning and analysis, facing challenges with statistical software and exploring visualization options.