The Final Blog

“One of your last postings”

“Please write a reflection on the course, what you have learned, what you have enjoyed (or not!).  It helps me reflect on how the course has gone and how I can improve it for the next group of students.”

A great introduction to research. Something I was expected to do in my previous medical training, but apart from an optional 5 day course after completing my university degree was not taught as part of the degree.

A lot of what we were taught here would have been useful to know earlier in the B IT course, would this be a useful class for first year students?

Probably, but considering the research project is the final third year course and this is designed to prepare students for the research project, then it needs to be third year course, students have a tendency to forget a large quantity of information from year to year!

Learning

The most learning in this course for me was the 2nd Assignment. To read and critique an academic paper was a challenge because of the subject I choose, facial recognition and neural networks. This required me to investigate a lot of material outside the paper to allow me to understand what the paper was talking about.

I made my life more difficult but I actually enjoyed the learning challenge and ended up with too bulky a report which lost me a couple of marks. But retrospectively, I would not change what I did.

What I didn’t Enjoy

Epistemology and Ontology:

Two difficult concepts to understand and even more difficult to attempt to explain, this was a challenge and I’m still not confident I understand where they fit in research and why we have to know about them.

Recommendations

The timetable, a minor consideration, but the last couple of hours on a Friday afternoon, with no other classes that day is a bad time for everyone, a lot of absentees and tired, unenthusiastic students.

I would suggest an earlier scheduled class.

 

Ethical Considerations in Research

 

Morals ———–Ethics —————-Law

Is the behaviour described in the examples below related to ethics:

If it is, why and how?
Can you come up with a solution that would solve the ethical problem?

1. You find some good images on the web that would look good on your site.  You copy and paste them to your blog.

• In general using someone else’s work without crediting the creator is unethical
• The answer to this depends on the images and their source and whether the blog is earning money.
• Many images are available under a Creative Commons license allowing free fair use
• Copyright images can be used if permission is obtained from the owner
• Using a copyright images is usually illegal
• There are many websites currently offering free content such as unsplash.com
• There are morality issues as to the massive amount of money made by some businesses selling content on the web.

2. You are in a hurry to finish an assignment and you find the perfect explanation  of a difficult concept on Wikipedia. You decide to copy it into your work.

• Strictly speaking copying directly from a source, while not unethical is academically frowned upon, it is better to paraphrase to show understanding of the concepts.
• APA referencing require the use of quotation marks and in text referencing directly copied material.
• At the bottom of each page Wikipedia has the following statement “This page is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License”
• This means that material on Wikipedia is free and can be copied, shared and adapted
• Provided you give appropriate credit, distribute the content using the same licence and do not restrict access to your content.

3. You are a medical researcher and you think you have discovered a new drug that cures lung cancer.  It worked well on mice although a few of them died of heart problems. You want to test it on people.  You recruit 100 lung cancer patients into your treatment programme. You don’t tell them about the new drug.  You treat 50 patients with usual drugs and 50 with the new drug to see which is better.

• This is definitely unethical, there is no indication of consent in the process
• Additionally, it is not ethical to test without telling the patient they may be taking an experimental drug.
• Additionally, there is no evidence that they were informed of Death as a potential side-effect.
• Today most new drugs are introduced in phases, starting with phase 0 trials on a small set of people to assess the effect of the drug on a body.
• The trials progress through to phase 4 which is after FDA approval and involves thousands of patients
• https://www.nccn.org/patients/resources/clinical_trials/phases.aspx is a good overview.
• This issue can be solved by following standard phases required by regulatory authorities
• There will also be thorough Informed Consent involved at each stage of the process
• Potential side-effects are part of the Informed Consent documentation

4. You are doing your PhD about drug abuse among students.  You interview 30 students about their drug use. You discover that one of the students is actually a fairly big time dealer and you report him to the police.

• The ethics of reporting a study subject to authorities is a tricky issue
• Legally both the users and dealers of drugs are engaging in a criminal act
• What makes the Dealer any different from a user? It boils down to harm
• Potentially the Dealer is subjecting the user to potential serious consequences.
• If the consequences were minimal then I think Privacy and Confidentiality issues should prevent informing the authorities
• A better designed study would solve this
• The students would be anonymised, maybe with a written survey with no personal information
• Additionally the study should specify boundaries, what will constitute behaviour that will be reported, again informed consent would help here
• The students then understand the risks of participation

5. You are a researcher looking at the effect of violent computer games on children.  You recruit 20 children into your study. Over a month you regularly show them images of violence to see if it has an adverse effect on their behaviour.  One of the children becomes quite distressed each time and so you stop showing her images and drop her from the study.

• Ethically this study would never happen
• No researcher wold be allowed to expose children to potential harmful content
• No ethics committee would allow expose to violence in any form
• This problem is solved by doing a retrograde study
• Study groups of children and identify behaviors in those that have been exposed to violence in the past and compare the groups
• The principal of any research should be “first do no harm”

6. You want to research how easy it is to hack into your organisation’s computer system by persuading people to divulge login and password details.  You recruit a small team to ring up key people in the organisation and persuade them to give either their own or their boss’s details.

• This research is not ethical as the subjects do not know they are being studied
• There are also legal considerations of Hacking a company’s system
• Penetration testing of a system is allowed if the company has recruited you to do the testing
• This situation can be avoided by informing staff that an exercise will be taking place in the future, this will affect the results in some way but surprisingly in this situation a significant proportion will still divulge the confidential information

7. You are doing an initial research in area of a town where may bars and pubs are located, to estimate the level of problematic social behaviour in the area. your research is independent from the police, because you want to observe their behaviour as well. You observe both abusive and violent behaviour.

• Again, the ethics are complicated here
• People are being studied with no informed consent of the testing, even though it’s just observation
• But informing then will invalidate the study by changing their behaviour
• Police are not well known for a positive reaction to being observed
• Abusive and violent behaviour has a high potential for harm
• To solve this issue would require defining boundaries in the study as to which types of behaviour would be “acceptable” for the study and what behaviours would require informing a relevant authority

Week 10: Updating Week 8 and Peer Review

Brainstorming the project (from week 8 blog)

This has been updated to complete Part 3: Making a choice

Making a Choice

• Choose one of the questions and make a more detailed description of what I would do to answer/explore the question i.e. a first draft of your list of activities

I have chosen to build on Question 4:

Q4: How can I build a neural network to recognise and classify an image?

• Write a title for this possible project.
  • Building a Neural network to recognise and classify a face in an image

The project will have 2 components:

1.       A research and learning element to explore the topics of NNs, ML and face recognition
2.       Building a NN to detect and analyse a face in an image

Activities

•         I have already taken the first step, as part of assignment 2 I read an academic article on Face detection which introduced me to the field of computer vision
•         Research into Computer Vision using a search engine to find relevant articles
•         Research using Google Scholar for academic articles on Computer Vision, specifically general overviews of the subject
•         Lynda courses

o   Neural Networks and Convolutional Neural Networks Essential Training is a course I have already started

o   Deep Learning: Face Recognition

o   Classify images and detect rectangles

•         CourseRA tutorials

o   Convolutional Neural Networks a course I am already studying

•         Exploring and using Microsoft Azure’s cloud based Face or Computer Vision services

 

Peer review

I have chosen to peer review Cam’s blog post for the Areas of Interest document.

1: An Interesting area of IT

Web apps  power the world today and as you have stated there are web apps for every conceivable thing we do in life.

This is a good discussion of the power of apps in today’s world with an interesting discussion of what you do and don’t know.

I appreciate the thought o work by yourself and research and build an app, but the Fisheries presentation has some potential as a work place as they need some apps developed for their staff, this might be a better option to focus your research and built something the company can use.

Your resources show a large number of tools available to assist you with this project.

2. Identifying a project

Your questions are a good starting point, like me you ran out of questions as you had identified some good questions early.

You picked three questions very relevant to your interest.

Firstly do the research, then figure out where to start, this is always the trickiest part of any project, taking the first steps.

The last question explores the process of how an app is created.

Three good questions which if you put the all together are the building blocks of a project which will see you design and build a useful app.

3. Making a choice

There is not much detail here, you have made a choice of what you would like to do, although I think this will change as you explore the potential work place experience to build an all for a company.

My only criticism: You have not discussed what you would do to further explore the Web app development process or started a list of activities you could pursue.

4. Ethics

I like your thoughts here, how many of those apps out there are actually just time wasters built and deployed just because someone could. With little though of the effect the app could have on individuals.

I would never have thought that building an app would have ethical considerations.

Week 9: Other Blogs

This has been discussed in a previous blog post:

 

Week 7: Useful Class Blog/s

 

Week 8: Brainstorming the Project

This blog will be developed and updated over the next few weeks as we discuss and brainstorm ideas in class, so currently it is incomplete!

Update: Part 3, Making a choice is now complete!

The template for this document comes from a class document:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VEd5a-BBfhtcWMovGqPzScbsuLvvsXMp2B7vFPK5tpk/edit

Part 1: Broad Research/Project Interest Area – Machine Learning

1. Short description of area of IT that interests me

• I’m interested in exploring the development of neural networks and how they relate to machine learning and how a machine can be taught and learn
• Neural networks and their contribution to machine learning is a fascinating IT subject.

What is a neural network?

The simplest definition of a neural network is a computing system made up of a number of simple, highly interconnected processing elements (nodes), which process information by their dynamic state response to external inputs.

The hidden layers have multiple inter-connected nodes which are designed to detect patterns and edges and these are used to classify the input in the output layer. A neural network is designed to mimic how a brain would classify an image. The following is a good example of how humans can classify an unusual image, a task that is extremely difficult for a computer to perform.

To a human this is a giraffe, a weird giraffe but definitely still a giraffe. A computer would not recognise this. The neural network and machine learning is designed to feed a system with enough “giraffe” images that eventually a computer could predict with reasonably accuracy that this is a giraffe.     

What is a simple explanation of  how artificial neural networks work?    is a good starting place for basic information.

 

2. Why is it interesting to me?

• I find it fascinating how a machine can be taught to learn
• The human brain is a fascinating poorly explained organ and developing machines that can emulate a human brain will give us more insight into how a brain works

 

 3. Three things I know about it

• The maths behind neural nets is horrendous and complex to look at and understand
• Machines can be taught to recognise simple images accurately
• Pixelating an image makes it unrecognisable to a machine but humans can still interpret the image

 

 4. Three things I believe about it

• Googles re-captcha will be beaten by computers
• Its all about identifying edges
• Cloud providers have features to help (Amazon, Azure, Google) build neural nets, machine learning and AI

 

 5. Three things I don’t know about it

• How the code looks
• Can it work with a complex picture?
• Where to start!

 

 6. Would I rather: Do something, Research it or Do both

• My preference would be to do both
• I would ideally do something like build e.g. an image recognition system and also research into neural nets at the same time
• Ideally this would be a Work Place based project, using the project as the basis for a research report into the development of a neural net based AI/Machine learning/Image recognition project
• Alternatively, I will look into building a small character recognition app with a supporting research report into Neural networks and how machine learning works.

 

7. A few resources about Neural Nets and machine learning

• Your First Machine Learning Project in Python Step-By-Step
• https://www.tensorflow.org/
• Artificial neural networks: A tutorial
• A Convolutional Neural Network Cascade for Face Detection
• What is a simple explanation of how artificial neural networks work?

8. APA reference for these resources

• Brownlee, J. (2016, June 10). Your First Machine Learning Project in Python Step-By-Step. Retrieved from Machine Learning Mastery: https://machinelearningmastery.com/machine-learning-in-python-step-by-step/
• (n.d.). TensorFlow. Retrieved May 09, 2019, from Tensor Flow: https://www.tensorflow.org/
• Jain, A. K., Mao, J., & Mohiuddin, K. M. (1996). Artificial neural networks: A tutorial. Computer, (3), 31-44.
• Li, H., Lin, Z., Shen, X., Brandt, J., & Hua, G. (2015). A convolutional neural network cascade for face detection. In Proceedings of the IEEE conference on computer vision and pattern recognition (pp. 5325-5334).

 

Part 2: Identifying a possible project

• Construct some interesting questions about your topic
• Identify three good questions/ideas

 

1. How does a neural network work?
2. How does a machine recognise a written character?
3. How does a machine recognise an image?
4. How can I build a neural network to recognise and classify an image?
5. Is it possible for a machine to teach itself without human intervention to validate its results?

• For each of these 3 suggest what you could do to answer/explore it.

• What is the fundamental goal underlying each of the 3 questions?

Q1: How does a neural network work?

To answer this would require research into and learning about neural         networks, using a search engine to look for articles and video tutorials. As well as identifying and exploring any available training courses.

The fundamental goal is to learn more about Neural nets.

Q4: How can I build a neural network to recognise and classify an image?

I would explore one of available cloud providers (Amazon      Sagemaker/rekognition, Google tensorFlow, Azure Machine Learning Studio

The fundamental goal is to build a Neural Network and Machine Learning app

 

Q5: Is it possible for a machine to teach itself without human validation of its results?

This would require literature research into machine learning and how it works, how a machine can be taught and how to correct for a wrong result

The fundamental goal is to learn  more about machine learning and teaching a            machine to teach itself.

 

Part 3: Making a Choice

• Choose one of the questions and make a more detailed description of what I would do to answer/explore the question i.e. a first draft of your list of activities

I have chosen to build on Question 4:

Q4: How can I build a neural network to recognise and classify an image?

• Write a title for this possible project.
  • Building a Neural network to recognise and classify a face in an image

The project will have 2 components:

1.       A research and learning element to explore the topics of NNs, ML and face recognition
2.       Building a NN to detect and analyse a face in an image

Activities

•         I have already taken the first step, as part of assignment 2 I read an academic article on Face detection which introduced me to the field of computer vision
•         Research into Computer Vision using a search engine to find relevant articles
•         Research using Google Scholar for academic articles on Computer Vision, specifically general overviews of the subject
•         Lynda courses

o   Neural Networks and Convolutional Neural Networks Essential Training is a course I have already started

o   Deep Learning: Face Recognition

o   Classify images and detect rectangles

•         CourseRA tutorials

o   Convolutional Neural Networks a course I am already studying

•         Exploring and using Microsoft Azure’s cloud based Face or Computer Vision services

 

Part 4: Ethical Issues

There are no obvious ethical issues in my project.

The long term ethical issues regarding intelligent machines and their potential effects on future society are the topic of on going debate.

Will machines ever be capable of replacing humans in all their roles?

Currently IBM’s Watson is not as good as a real person in most fields of medicine!

https://spectrum.ieee.org/biomedical/diagnostics/how-ibm-watson-overpromised-and-underdelivered-on-ai-health-care

But there are areas, specifically related to interpretation of radiology images, CT scans. MRI and X-Rays where AI is now outperforming humans.

The movie “Ex Machina” is an excellent portrayal of how an uncontrollable female AI cyborg could replace humans in a future scenario.

Definitely a thought provoking movie!

 

 

Week 7: Useful Class Blog/s

 

For this weeks blog post we have been tasked with identifying a blog which will be most useful to other students in the class.

“Useful”?

I guess the first task will be to decide what is meant by ‘useful’ in this context.

How would another class members blog be useful to me?

1. If I am stuck on what the tutor wants from us!
   • Sometimes tutors are difficult to understand, for example, language and cultural barriers exist in communication
   • Sometimes tutors talk over our heads without realising and we need to interpret their talk into plain speech
2. If I’m stuck on a topic and I need another opinion about the direction I need to move in!
   • Not all topics are easy to just type int a search engine and it can be helpful to look at other blogs for pointers and a second/third opinion
3. Is the content relevant
   • Is the post relevant to the questions posed?
4. Is it interesting?
   • Some blogs are just the same as many of other of the blogs with just the basics facts without any additional insight or explanation
5. Are they up to date or ahead of the pack?
   • Some blogs are just not up to date –  no good if we want the latest information
   • Some blogs are ahead of the submission time – I need to work harder on this, started off well but then fell back into the habit of “I’ll finish at the last minute!”
6. Is the blog easy to read?
   • Some blogs require multiple clicks to find the content
   • Layout – use of headers, white space, and bullet points
   • Communication skills – can I easily understand their content
7. Personal Bias
   • Personal knowledge of the author – after 2 years in the class,  we know a little about our classmates and their thought processes and approaches and ideas
   • Not an objective approach to choosing a blog, but sub-consciously this will affect our choices
8. The Tutors Comments
   • What is the tutors opinion of the blog, just a small pointer to the quality of a blog, taking into consideration that the tutor is there to support students and they need to provide positive feedback

Now to choose and this is the difficult part because no one likes to be put on the spot in a situation like this and how do I choose one without offending all the others, especially when there are many good class blogs out of the 31 to choose from.

And there was definitely a subtle change in the atmosphere in the class when our tutor explained that we have to “Name” someone who’s blog will be useful, “We have to choose and NAME someone, Ahhhhhh…….”

Anyway, if you’re stuck take a look at these (of course listed alphabetically)

• Deja
• Robin

And for a quirkier approach:

• Corinna

 

Week 7: Class Exercise

What interests me about IT and what doesn’t.

(a ‘warming you up to the real stuff’ exercise!)

This is intended to be fun but to get you thinking about yourself!

Finish these sentences in no more than 10 words.

 

• The IT area/subject I have most enjoyed is Web application development

 

• The IT area/subject I least enjoyed is SYD Systems analysis and design and DES Design and Development concepts

 

• The IT area/subject I was most interested in is networking

 

• The one IT thing I never want to have to do again is Syd

 

• I chose to study IT because I  enjoy the new technology that’s always being developed

 

• If I couldn’t study IT I would study  – don’t know

 

• When I was a kid I wanted to be 007

 

• One IT thing I would like to know more about is   neural nets and machine learning

Week 6: Reading Academic Papers

I choose two new papers for this exercise. I have a daughter with Type 1 Diabetes and as a medical professional, I have always been curious as to why and how it all started. Was the Chicken Pox vaccine the last straw to her immune system? I’ll never know for sure but I am still curious. So I choose Paediatric Type 1 Diabetes and vaccinations for this exercise.

I decided on the following two similar articles to read, concentrating on the European article as the main article to discuss. The articles were found using Google Scholar and the APA referencing at the end of this post was generated with Google Scholar.

Both articles fit the criteria for Academic papers as I discussed in last weeks blog and contained all the required content and sections.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s001250050006

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Henry_Shinefield/publication/11623844_Childhood_Vaccinations_Vaccination_Timing_and_Risk_of_Type_1_Diabetes_Mellitus/links/00463531f5410bb2f2000000.pdf

The Exercise Questions

 

1. The Abstract should answer the following:

   • What is the research topic?
     • The abstract describes the aims of the research as: “To determine if vaccinations and infections are associated with the subsequent risk of
       Type I (insulin-dependent) diabetes mellitus in childhood.” (EURODIAB Substudy 2, 2000, p. 47)
   • What the authors/researchers did?
     • The abstract describes the methodology used by the researchers.
       • They compared information from 7 centres in Europe
       • They looked at 900 cases compared with 2302 controls
       • The controls were chosen randomly
       • They used patient records, interviews and questionnaires to obtain the data on infections and vaccinations
   • What they discovered/or created/or concluded?
     • They discovered a small increase risk associated with early childhood infections, with a decrease risk associated with pre-school attendance.
     • And concluded there is an influence on the developing immune system

2. What seems to be the research question(s) they were trying to answer ?

   • Type 1 Diabetes is known to be an Auto-Immune condition, the individuals immune system thinks parts of the pancreas are foreign invaders and destroys the cells. This results in no cells which produce insulin.
   • The researchers were looking for a link between some of the influences on the individuals developing immune system, specifically in these areas:
     • Early (perinatal) childhood infections
     • Common childhood infections
     • Vaccinations
     • Attendance at a pre-school
   • In summary, this is an investigation on early exposure to environmental factors as possible risk factors

3. What  methods did they use to answer the question(s)

   • They undertook a  large, multi-centre, population-based,
     case-control study
   • Cases came from 7 Centres with a register of childhood onset diabetes
   • The control group was age matched from population registers, schools or policlinics
   • 900 cases and 2302 controls responded
   • Interviews and questionnaires were used for some core data
   • Hospitals records were used for early childhood infections
   • Vaccination data was from official sources (9 vaccines)
   • Parental recall of 5 infectious diseases (Measles, Mumps, Rubella, Whooping cough and Chicken Pox)
   • Pre-school attendance from the parents responses

4. How credible do you think the paper is?

   • I think the paper is very credible.
   • The EURODIAB Study Group has undertaken and published numerous studies on childhood diabetes.
   • This article was published in the journal Diabetologia in 2000, a monthly peer-reviewed journal covering diabetology and is the official journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes. (Diabetologia, 2017)
   • The study was well designed and the findings were in keeping with their aims.
   • Their findings were also similar to other studies as described in their results
   • The only criticism was the use of parental recall for some data, not always the most accurate source of information.

5. Did you agree, or not, with what they wrote in their conclusion? Why?

   • They concluded: “It seems likely that the explanation for these contrasting findings of an increased risk associated with perinatal infections coupled
     with a protective effect of pre-school day care lies in the age-dependent modifying influence of infections on the developing immune system.” (EURODIAB Substudy 2, 2000, p. 47)
   • After reading their results and the subsequent discussion of their findings, I agree with their conclusion.
   • The study design and results as presented are in keeping with their ultimate discussion and conclusions
   • The second paper I read also confirms some of their findings in its conclusion: “In this large, population-based, case control study, we did not find an increased risk of type 1 diabetes associated with any of the routinely recommended childhood vaccines.” (DeStefano, F et al., 2001)

6. Briefly describe two things that you learnt from the paper.

   • I learned that may studies have looked at the association between Type 1 Diabetes and early childhood infections and vaccinations. The overall findings suggest that vaccines may provide some protection with a slight decrease in incidence.
   • I also learned that early (perinatal) infections cause a slight increased risk, while later infections will decrease the risk.
   • This fits in with the theory related to Asthma (another immune mediated disease), a rise in Asthma incidence is related to the hygiene hypothesis, which
     claims that normal ‘education’ of the immune system by exposure to environmental conditions is required by the immune system to prevent immune mediated conditions.

A description of the paper

This research paper is a sub-study of a research group, the EORODIAB Study group, who have published numerous studies on Type 1 Diabetes in Europe.

This paper is a primary research paper which is looking at associations with a set of environmental factors and the subsequent development of Type 1 Diabetes in children under 15 years.

The paper is about children in Europe and the possible reasons they may be susceptible to Type 1 Diabetes. The researchers discuss some of the potential reasons for how the Immune System is affected by the environmental conditions a child is exposed to and the belief that the Immune System need to be exposed to various factors in the environment to develop correctly. The Hygiene hypothesis is discussed in terms of the immune system as a comparison with childhood Asthma.

The authors have studied a good-sized population and compared them to random matched controls to look for any evidence to link the following factors to the development of Type 1.

• Exposure to early/perinatal infection
• Vaccination history
• Exposure to 5 common childhood infections
• Using pre-school attendance as a measure of expose to other childhood infections

The authors used good methodology and study design to produce a credible paper. They also used good statistical methods to compare the cases with control groups.

I enjoyed their final discussion where they discussed some of the ideas behind the onset of childhood diabetes and were able to present their results as well as comment on other studies and how they compared with this studies results.

The final results summarise as follows:

• Exposure to early/perinatal infection = increased risk
• Vaccination history = no effect
• Exposure to 5 common childhood infections = no effect
• Pre-school attendance = decreased risk

(EURODIAB Substudy 2, 2000)

References:

DeStefano, F., Mullooly, J. P., Okoro, C. A., Chen, R. T., Marcy, S. M., Ward, J. I., … & Bohlke, K. (2001). Childhood vaccinations, vaccination timing, and risk of type 1 diabetes mellitus. Pediatrics, 108(6), E112.

Diabetologia. (2017, August 28). Retrieved April 11, 2019, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diabetologia

EURODIAB Substudy 2. (2000). Infections and vaccinations as risk factors for childhood type I (insulin-dependent) diabetes mellitus: a multicentre case-control investigation. Diabetologia, 43, 47-53.

Week 5: Academic Article search exercise

Article 1

• Title and author(s) of the article

  • Title: Clustered Synopsis of Surveillance Video
  • Authors: Yael Pritch, Sarit Ratovitch, Avishai Hendel, Shmuel Peleg,
  • Affiliation: School of Computer Science and Engineering, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

• APA reference

  • Pritch, Y., Ratovitch, S., Hendel, A., & Peleg, S. (2009, September). Clustered synopsis of surveillance video. In 2009 Sixth IEEE International Conference on Advanced Video and Signal Based Surveillance (pp. 195-200). IEEE.

• How you found the article and what keywords you used

  • I used the Google Scholar search engine
  • Keywords: “AI video analysis”

• What kind of article it is

  • This is a Conference paper
  • Appeared in 6th IEEE Int. Conf. on Advanced Video and Signal
    Based Surveillance (AVSS’09), Genoa, Italy, Sept. 2-4, 2009

• All the reasons that you think it is an academic article

  • Is it published in a Research Journal or Proceedings of an Academic Conference: Yes
  • Found in a Library’s Journal database: No
  • Or using an Academic Search Engine (eg Google Scholar): Yes
  • Is it primary research: Yes
  • Is it peer reviewed: Unknown

• How well it fits the ‘Structure of an Academic Article’

  • Title/Authors/Affiliation: Yes
  • Abstract: Yes
  • Introduction: Yes
  • Literature Review: No
  • Research Methods: Yes
  • Results: Yes
  • Discussion: No
  • Conclusion: Yes
  • References: Yes

• How many references it has

  • 29 References

• How many citations it has

  •  107 Citations

• For articles that you found online,  the URL of the article

  • ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/5280098/

• Say whether you are interested in properly reading the article or not (and give some reasons!)

  • I am considering AI analysis of Videos as a work-experience project in semester 2 which is why I used the specified keywords in Google Scholar
  • The best way to determine whether I want to read the entire article is to skim through the abstract and final conclusions.
  • Based on this quick look, I found the article does not match my research needs for the project, so I would not read the article in depth.

Article 2

• Title and author(s) of the article

  • Title: Video Parsing Based on Head Tracking and Face Recognition
  • Authors: Pengxu Li, Haizhou Ai, Yuan Li and Chang Huang
  • Affiliation: Department of Computer Science and Technology, Tsinghua University, Beijing

• APA reference

  • Li, P., Ai, H., Li, Y., & Huang, C. (2007, July). Video parsing based on head tracking and face recognition. In Proceedings of the 6th ACM international conference on Image and video retrieval (pp. 57-64). ACM.

• How you found the article and what keywords you used

  • I used the Google Scholar search engine
  • Keywords: “AI video analysis”

• What kind of article it is

  • This is a Conference paper
  • Appeared in CIVR ’07 Proceedings of the 6th ACM international conference on Image and video retrieval, Amsterdam, The Netherlands — July 09 – 11, 2007

• All the reasons that you think it is an academic article

  • Is it published in a Research Journal or Proceedings of an Academic Conference: Yes
  • Found in a Library’s Journal database: No
  • Or using an Academic Search Engine (eg Google Scholar): Yes
  • Is it primary research: Yes
  • Is it peer reviewed: Unknown

• How well it fits the ‘Structure of an Academic Article’

  • Title/Authors/Affiliation: Yes
  • Abstract: Yes
  • Introduction: Yes
  • Literature Review: No
  • Research Methods: Yes
  • Results: Yes
  • Discussion: No
  • Conclusion: Yes
  • References: Yes

• How many references it has

  •  23 References

• How many citations it has

  •  21 Citations

• For articles that you found online,  the URL of the article

  • dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1282288

• Say whether you are interested in properly reading the article or not (and give some reasons!)

  • To answer this, I used the same basic considerations as for Article 1.
  • Based on this quick look, I found the article to be of interest to me and potentially useful for the research needs for the project, so I would read the article in depth.
  • The article looks like an interesting read on how to track  and identify faces in videos

Week 4: Research Methods

This week we have been asked to discuss one of the potential research methods that we can choose.

Divided into teams we have topics to discuss under the following headings:

Secondary Research

1. What is it ? (Short description of how it works)
2. What kinds of questions/problems might it be useful for?
3. How could it be used in IT research (try to think of an example)?
4. What are the strengths of the approach?
5. What are the weaknesses of the approach?

What is Secondary Research?

To define Secondary research we first need to understand what is primary research. Primary research involves the generation of data, it is typically original research and involves the collection of data and its analysis by the researcher who conducts the research and collects the information.

Secondary research is the re-analysis of data collected in a primary research study, either using different statistical methods but often to answer a different question to the original primary research.

There are similarities to Meta-Analysis Research Methods, both use primary sources of data but with different outcomes. A meta-analysis usually evaluates and collates the result of numerous primary research into the same question and produces a type of ‘Summary’ of all the primary research, where secondary research is usually answering a different question to the primary research.

In this case the data collection is not the responsibility of the researcher, the researcher is using existing, previously collected and published data. i.e data from primary research.

Secondary research is often the first step in a primary research study. Has the question already been studied in previous primary research? We want to prevent the re-discovery of what is already known.

The growth of the web and databases has now provided virtually unlimited access to primary sources of data.

Key Differences between Primary Research and Secondary Research

Primary Research	Secondary Research
Research is conducted first hand to obtain data. Researcher “owns” the data collected.	Research is based on data collected from previous researches.
Primary research is based on raw data.	Secondary research is based on tried and tested data which is previously analyzed and filtered.
The data collected fits the needs of a researcher, it is customized. Data is collected based on the absolute needs of organizations or businesses.	Data may or may not be according to the requirement of a researcher.
Researcher is deeply involved in research to collect data in primary research.	As opposed to primary research, secondary research is fast and easy. It aims at gaining a broader understanding of subject matter.
Primary research is an expensive process and consumes a lot of time to collect and analyze data.	Secondary research is a quick process as data is already available. Researcher should know where to explore to get most appropriate data.

www.questionpro.com/blog/secondary-research/

What type of questions/problems might it be useful for?

Anything really, any question that can be asked based on the available data already collected. Any questions/problems that exist for which an answer can be extrapolated from previous existing data.

How can it be used in IT research?

An example of use in IT would be researching how the population accesses the internet. The government’s already collected census data could be analyzed to see percentages of population with fibre/copper/satellite connection to the internet.

Search engines and social media are massive collectors of data, this data is bought and used by other IT companies to target marketing and advertising.

Advantages/Strengths of Secondary Research

• the data is already available for analysis
• less expense
• less time consuming
• the primary data has often been reviewed by peers

Disadvantages/Weakness of Secondary Research

• the data is by definition old, it may not be up to date
• the credibility of the data must be carefully evaluated, is it believable and valid.
• quality of secondary research is dependent  on and may be lower than primary research
• the data was analyzed for a purpose not necessarily the same purpose as the secondary research, this could affect the quality