This week, there were two guest lecturers who came to speak with the class on the topic of Open Data. From the two guest lecturers, I learned a great deal about the subject matter.

What interested me the most was the talk about preparing and curating data, which involves quite a few steps. It allows me to take my gathered data into a much more easily read and organized form via Python and manual observation. In addiiton, it was very surprising for me to learn that spreadsheets are, in fact, not very reliable when working with large amounts of data. Instead, it is a much better idea to work with programs that utilize SQL for data collection and organization, such as mySQL.

I was also very interested in learning how to collect data in the first place. The second lecture contained a great number of tips and advice for collecting data, and useful guidelines to follow. In the future, if I am to ever collect data for any projects or assignments, then I will be able to use what I’ve learned to assist me in my endeavors.

All in all, I found the guest lectures very educational and was impressed with what I learned from it.