Week 9: Team analysis

View image | gettyimages.com

How would our team fit into the Belbin model of team roles? Is is a little tricky to answer, as there were only 4 of us who stuck it out, and there are 9 Belbin team roles in the model. Also for the most part we didn't observe each other working, due to the geographic and scheduling constraints.

However the core idea of Belbin team roles is that a successful team is comprised of a mixture of personality types, with complementary strengths and allowable weaknesses. I believe our team did have this, with perhaps one notable gap, but more about that in a moment.

Firstly, as our group report topic selection didn't include the "vaccination" question which I had researched for my position report, I felt it made sense to take on the editor role rather than start from scratch researching a new topic. I enjoyed doing this, and perhaps took on the role of Completer Finisher. Fortunately my team mates trusted me with this role and I didn't experience any problems with delegation anxiety.

Our team leader, Cara, turned out to be a great Co-ordinator, keeping everything hanging together, and also realising early on that we were going to have a problem with one of our original team members, who became less communicative and eventually disappeared from view altogether.

This sudden shrinking of the team meant that the remaining two members of the team, Mane and Max, also had their work cut out for them. Nobody got an easy ride in team 18! Certainly they were both Teamworkers, but also Implementers. If they hadn't both stepped up and willingly taken on extra tasks when required then we would have been in trouble.

Finally the role that we were perhaps missing. Our team unfortunately missed a key requirement of the report, which had an impact on our final grade. No single person is to blame of course... we all missed it! It felt like a silly mistake and probably could have been fixed at the editing stage if only we'd realised it. I think that the final role which would have rounded out the team would have been a shaper or a resource investigator. Somebody who would not only go over the requirements with a fine-toothed comb, but also say "Stop! We can do better!". Anyway, lesson learned -- and after all that's what we're here for!

Week 8: Good public speaking

Slide from Greig Roulston's Kiwi Pycon talk: Find All The Books
Credit: Greig Roulston

Last year I attended a Kiwi PyCon in Wellington. A PyCon is a conference where people get together to discuss what they're doing with the Python programming language. As Python is used for such a broad range of applications, this can make for some really interesting talks on some diverse topics over the two days of the conference.

Some of the talks are better than others. As you can imagine, when you talk about your own niche corner of programming for up to an hour you run the risk of boring your audience to sleep. Interestingly though, the talks which were most engaging at the time are also the talks where I can still remember many of the technical details.

Credit: Greig Roulston

So what makes some of these talks so much more interesting and memorable than others? In many cases the speakers were just great, and obviously get invited to many conferences, but one thing the best talks all had in common was the effective use of humour.

One of the best talks last year was by Greig Roulston from the digitisation team at National Library of New Zealand. On the face of it his topic was rather dry: How, as a programming newcomer he gradually acquired the skills and technology to analyse an arcane metadata format, and cross reference his data sets to blah blah blah zzzzzz. However, thanks to his clever use of humour, and a speaker deck which was a work of art, this was widely considered one of the top talks of the conference.

Credit: Greig Rouston

The problem is that I'm not sure how easy it is to replicate this success in a formulaic way. I think you would either need to be a naturally funny and sociable person, or have built up your confidence through doing a lot of public speaking. I can see the potential for attempts at humour to backfire if you were under-confident or if it seemed forced.

Greig's entire talk can be viewed below:

Week 7: To infinity, and beyond!

View image | gettyimages.com

This week I've been thinking about space things, and how these are interesting times indeed for space exploration and technology. In addition to robot probes beaming back never before seen sights from unexplored corners of the solar system, advances in rocket technology promise to make it cheaper (and cooler) to launch satellites and spacecraft from Earth.

In August 2014 Rosetta became the first spacecraft to orbit a comet. Since then we have been treated to astounding photos of the comet's truly alien landscape.

The cliffs of comet 67P
Credit: ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM – CC BY-SA IGO 3.0

This year we will be getting close up images of two more mysterious rocks, the dwarf planets Ceres and Pluto, both of which were previously only glimpsed in blurry images from the Hubble Space Telescope.

The Dawn probe has already returned the best images yet of Ceres. and will arrive on March 6 2015, where it will become the first spacecraft to study a dwarf planet at close range. We may finally figure out what that white dot is for!

Dawn approaches the dwarf planet Ceres.Credit: NASA / JPL / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA / Emily Lakdawalla

Four months later New Horizons will perform the first flyby of ex-planet Pluto, finally revealing the secrets of this mysterious ball of ice and rock.

Currently our best map of dwarf planet Pluto
Credit: Aineias, NASA, ESA, and M. Buie (Southwest Research Institute)

Meanwhile, back on Earth, SpaceX are revolutionising launch technology. This is a particularly interesting time to follow SpaceX's progress, as with every launch they gradually perfect the techniques to recover the Falcon 9 rocket's first stage -- The giant lower portion of the rocket which usually crashes back down to Earth once its job of lifting the rest of the rocket is complete.

The way that they plan to recover the lower stage is straight out of science fiction: landing vertically under computer controlled rocket power. The eventual goal is to return the rocket to it's launch pad, but the interim goal involves landing on a floating drone platform in the ocean.

The great benefit of recovering the first rocket stage is that it can then be reused for only the cost of the refurbishment and refuelling. SpaceX anticipate that this could reduce the cost of launching into space by a hundredfold.

The above video show their latest (and closest) attempt yet. A shortage of hydraulic fluid for the aerodynamic fins brought about RUD (Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly) at the last moment. With two launches scheduled for February 2015, a successful recovery could be only weeks away.

This generation may not have our own Apollo mission to follow (yet), but there is more than enough amazing stuff going on to keep me interested.

Week 6: Leadership

View image | gettyimages.com

For the group assignment there are two important positions to be filled: Team leader, and editor. I think the leadership role would have been very interesting, but I have not put my hand up for this role for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, there is a time commitment to fulfilling leadership duties properly. I think a being good leader requires a sustained effort, regularly taking stock of where the project is up to. The leader should make sure the team is on an even keel. This is not to say that they should "micro-manage" the team members-- if someone is getting on with their task then let them!

Secondly, Cara is already doing a great job of steering our team into the starting box, and I'm sure she'll do just as good of a job when we formalise this role. I have instead opted to be the team's editor. An intensive effort at the end of the project seems more like my style!

Week 5: Group assignment time!

View image | gettyimages.com

Assignment 1 is now complete, and it's time for assignment 2, the group report.

As mentioned previously, last year I completed a Diploma in Software Development. One of the final assignments for this was a writing a report as a group project, so fortunately I am somewhat prepared for what comes next.

The "diploma" report was longer than the one we will be doing (it was more of a business solution proposal really), but the work was spread over a much larger team.

I expect assignment 2, with a group of only 4 or 5 people, will have a more intense workload for all involved -- nowhere for a slack team-member to hide! Secondly it should be easier for the team leader to coordinate the work. In the larger team of 12 people it was necessary to split off into smaller groups that were self-governed while completing their assigned task.

Fortunately our team was sorted out quite early on. They've been a supportive and communicative bunch during the "assignment 1" weeks, and I have every expectation that we'll do a great job on assignment 2.

Week 4: Balance

View image | gettyimages.com

When reporting on science, the fair and balanced thing to do is to give both sides of the argument an equal opportunity to put forward their point of view, right?

Not always. Take, for example, the 97% of scientists who agree that climate change is both real, and caused by humans (Bray, 2010). Given this overwhelming scientific consensus it would be a strange kind of "balance" to give the views of the 3% who disagree equal weight. Unfortunately this does happen far more often than it should.

There is a tendency to apply this brand of balance to other issues of broad scientific agreement, such as immunisation. Petousis-Harris, Goodyear-Smith, Kameshwar & Turner (2010) suggests that this tactic is used by journalists to excuse them from the more difficult task of evaluating whether the viewpoints presented are based on fact or fallacy. The unfortunate side effect, however, is that dubious viewpoints presented as "balancing" arguments are thus granted undue credibility.

So remember, next time you're reading about science in the media, firstly to apply your critical faculties to all viewpoints, but to be especially wary of the fringe viewpoints provided for the sake of "balance". Equal airtime does not mean equal credibility!

References

Bray, D. (2010). The scientific consensus of climate change revisited. Environmental Science & Policy, 13(5), 340–350.

Petousis-Harris, H. A., Goodyear-Smith, F. A., Kameshwar, K & Turner, N. (2010). Fact or fallacy: Immunisation arguments in the New Zealand print media. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, 34(5), 521–526.

Week 3: Summarising the debate

#151327601 / gettyimages.com

For the "opposing arguments" in my position paper, I had to get a bit creative finding sources to cite which were actually against vaccination. In the end I relied on the web manifestos of one anti-vaccine group, and one "pro vaccine-choice" group. I hesitate to name them here, as no doubt they have Google alerts set up to detect and counter anyone who mentions them. I'm not interested in entering into that particular debate here.

My research also turned up a submission to the Health Select Committee inquiry into how to improve completion rates of childhood immunisation. I was fortunate to have come across this as a formal and articulate outline of the concerns of anti-vaccination groups in New Zealand, as early in the research process I doubted whether I would come across anything of this sort.

One of the key arguments in this submission was there has been a decline in death rates from infectious diseases that pre-dates the introduction of vaccination programs (Claridge, 2010). Therefore, it's reasoned, vaccinations were not responsible for the declines, rather it is other factors such as improved sanitation and hand washing. Graph upon graph then compared the decline in infection rates with the introduction date of the applicable vaccine.

This is typical of the arguments of anti-vaccination groups. When they aren't advocating that vaccines are outright dangerous, they suggest that the risks posed by vaccine, whether small or not, simply aren't worthwhile because vaccines just don't work in any case.

The Ministry of Health has an active role in directly combating false information about vaccination. The Immunisation Handbook 2014, is a great resource enumerating and refuting false beliefs about immunisation. Once the key points have been identified, it is easier to locate the appropriate primary literature to back up the facts.

For example, I found that improvements in sanitation do indeed help to control infection rates, However, outbreaks of diseases such as measles still occur (Ministry of Health, 2014). In fact, as these factors make it likely that you may dodge infection through childhood, this may make vaccination more important. This is because the symptoms of many infectious diseases are much worse for adults. Such is the case with Hepatitis A, which although harmless to children, increases in seriousness along with the age of the patient, the the potential to cause serious illness or death (Willner, Howard & Riely, 1998).

 Claridge, S. (2010). Submission on the Inquiry into how to improve completion rates of childhood immunisation [Submission to the Health Select Committee]. Retrieved from http://www.parliament.nz/en-nz/pb/sc/documents/evidence/49SCHE_EVI_00DBSCH_INQ_9658_1_A36922/sue-claridge

 Ministry of Health. (2014). Immunisation Handbook 2014. Wellington: Ministry of Health.

 Willner, I. R., Howard, S.C., & Riely, C. A. (1998). Serious Hepatitis A: An Analysis of Patients Hospitalized during an Urban Epidemic in the United States. Annals of Internal Medicine, 128(2), 111–117.