Graphing Frenzy

So we have this Research Skills and Report Writing subject this semester which require us to conduct surveys and pen a 2,000-word-minimum report.

Its kinda like your SPM’s BM paper two where they ask you to write a summary based on some table or chart of statistics. Only this time, you gather the statistics, painstakingly tabulate them, draw tons and tons of graphs, pie charts, tables and whatnot, and write a summary on every-freakin-graph. Then you’d have to discuss the data, draw obvious conclusions and cook up a few lame recommendations.

Worst of all, it’s due next week. Bummer.

I teamed up with Ah Wu and worked on student’s laptop ownership and use, a rather spur-of-the moment choice of a topic, you see.

Despite the stressful and brainjuice-draining efforts to think of a thousand and one different ways to interpret a graph, the findings are somewhat interesting to look at. Through the graph above, for example, you’ll see that 63% of Swinburne students actually own a laptop.

Rich bastards.

Well nevermind that, that percentage could be way higher in your campus but take a look at this:

We got our hands on stunning results on how Swinburnites use their laptops. Online research and completing assignments are actually the highest in frequency (notice how dishonest hardworking we males are!). But what caught me head-scratching was how ‘Gaming’, ‘Chatting’ and ‘Watching movies’ sank to the very depths of the scales.

If it were my graph of percentage of time against that list of activities, it’ll be an exact copy of that graph above - only rotated a hundred and eighty degrees.

I’m different.

Be afraid. Very, afraid.


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Thing is, I’ve been working on graphs everyday for the past week, I see graphs in everything.

I call it, the Graphoholic syndrome.

During last night’s tutorial, our Engineering Math test papers were returned. I looked at it, and a pie-chart materialised above my head.

OMG.