This week I focused on closing out my project and documentation. I analyzed my data by finishing the plotly graphs. I found my results to be inconclusive because when I added in the error bars into the graphs, there was a lot of overlap. After looking at my results, I worked on creating my final presentation for Ms.Pettys and the public exhibition. I put together images from my yearlong work and then practiced my explanations. (link below) This project overall gave me a new insight into the scientific method, specifically statistics, and the commitment it takes to stick with a project over the course of a year.

This week I ran another test on a participant. If things go according to plan, by the end of Friday April 21 I will be into the analysis stage of my project for phase one. While I have previously set up graphs to automatically make a visual of my data, I still have more components of analysis I need to go over in order to determine any solid trends. For example I need to Use the program Plotly to graph my data averages for each lighting condition and then create error bars in order to determine if any findings are truly significant. I need to make a time to talk with Mr. Halstead about the feasibility of the second phase of my project depending on the results I find. This past week I have also prepared my resume and cover letter for the job interview practice. The job that I will be pretending to interview for is an internship position at the United Nations. In the coming weeks I will also be reading more about the job position in order to be prepared for my interview in a couple weeks.

This week I do two more tests on participants. This puts me at a total of 18 tests. I will finish the remaining two in the early part of next week. I will then go into further analysis of my data, using the program Plotly to graph my overall averages for each lighting field. This weekend and in the coming week I will also prepare for my mock interview. I will put together a resume and cover letter for the position I have chosen to do the mock interview for which is "Human rights intern at the UN".

This week I did one test. I had scheduled three for this week but conflicts came up with two of my participants. I will aim to do these tests early next week. Due to the fact that I was not able to get three tests done this week I am severely behind schedule. Next week I will need to finish the first phase of my project and work further on data analysis especially using the online program Plotly to graph my data averages.

I was gone for most of this week so I did not have time to get much done. On Thursday I ran a test on another participant. this brings my total to sixteen people. In the coming week I am looking to test three more so that I can finish the first phase of my project and further my data analysis.

Last week I Tested another participant. this brings the total of my data up to 17 people. By this time I had planned to be up to at least twenty tests, so I am a bit behind schedule. I plan on making up for this by doing a lot of tests the week I come back from break. I am still needing to talk to Dr. Bill about the saline solution for the sensors of the EEG headset. When I come back from break, I will finish up this phase of testings, and then move into phase two of my projects. In order to do this I need to come up with a new, quiet location to run tests under more normal lighting conditions. I will look at identifying new possible locations for the second phase of my project before I leave for spring break.

This week I focused on the organization and analysis of my data. Early in the week I created color coded histograms of my raw data for the six fields of brain activity under each of the four lighting conditions (image below). This allowed me to do a side by side comparison of the raw data for each lighting condition. for example, I was able to look at places of data clusters on certain graphs, and if data values were around the same across the different lighting conditions of if they varied. this gives me and idea if there will be any significant findings in my results. for example, if most participants have a percent focus of sixty under every type of lighting condition, it can be observed that the lighting conditions I tested probubly don't have much affect on peoples level of focus. However, I could also find the opposite to be true if data was spread out, and did not share many trends between the graphs. I set up these graphs as a reference to the cells in the spreadsheet that contain my raw data values, so each time I put in a new value the graphs automatically update.This week I also began looking at graphing error bars for the averages under each lighting condition in each specific field of my data values. I would like to make the error bars for each average percent of a certain field based on the margin of error of that particular data set. for example, if the average for focus under LED lighting has a margin of error of 3.5%, I would like to make my error bar cover 3.5% above and below the average value. Google spread sheets did not allow me to make custom error bars, so I am going to use the program Plotly. This allows me to customize my error bars when graphing. Next week I am looking to do more participant testing, and possibly explore graphing more of my data on Plotly.

This week has been very short because Monday was international day, resulting in only two class periods this week. I have been experiencing some of the scheduling issues I experinced earlier in the year. I did one testa lunch today, but need to do two more this week to have done three per week (my goal). Everything went fairly smoothly once the EEG Emotiv Insight headset was connected, however it took quite a while to get to a solid level of connectivity. I remember last semester when I was having this issue, I talked to Dr. Bill about getting a saline solution to apply to the EEG sensors to improve connectivity. I will follow through on this, and ask Dr. bIll about it when he has a moment. Next week I will be gone on thursday and friday for a waterloo tournament, so I will schedule more tests earlier in the week.

This week I had my meeting with Mr. Halstead for the mid quarter check in. I feel everything went well overall. I was able to talk about what I have learned in statistics as well as my timeline for the project. As of now, I am hoping to finish this first phase of my project (isolated light testing) by the beginning of spring break. this would put me at a completed number of twenty tests. This week I only was able to complete one lighting test during lunch because people had to reschedule due to conflicts. I am planning on completing these missed ones next week.

this week I was sick during one of the class periods so I missed a work module. I had pervasively scheduled quite a few people for testing during the week, but complications arose. A couple people cancelled and then I was not able to do any testing on friday because of the BIIF swimming meet. In the coming week I will reschedule the tests that didn't occur during this week. I think i am doing better in terms of organization. with the help of Mr. Halstead, I was able to organize the spreadsheets that contain my data so that they calculate things such as standard deviation and percent error automatically as new data is imputed. In the coming week I will do more testing. specifically, wednesdy, thursday, and friday lunch times.

during this week I sent out a second mass email to the upper school asking for participants for my study. I am pleased to say I got a lot of responses back. I scheduled times for a few people to come in, and am working on scheduling more in the coming week. I also did two lighting tests last week. however, I will have to disregard one set of results because the headset was having connectivity issues on that participant. At this point in my project I am just focusing on doing as many lighting trials as possible to raise my sample size in order to obtain a 95% confidence rate with as small of a margin of error as possible. In terms of statistics, I learned from Mr. Halstead this week, about the Student's T distribution graph. a couple weeks ago I learned about the normal curve and how to identify things about that data based on the graph. The Student's T graph is similar to the normal curve, but is used when there is a small sample size. It looks very similar to the normal distribution graph, but it is less steep on the two slopes, accounting for a broader variation in data values which naturally occur with a smaller sample size. I will most likely use this model because I will have a small sample size.

Last week I spent the first class going over more statistics terms and concepts with Mr. Halstead. I learned more about calculating different values based on a normal curve. Mr. Halstead showed me how to calculate standard deviation and Margin of error for my light test results under natural lighting. From this exercise I learned that these things can be calculated within google spreadsheets(image attached below). I also learned about error bars; what they are, and also how they can play a role in determining if data can be considered significant. for example,in the case of my experiment, if the margin of error for the average data value for stress under a particular light overlaps the margin of error for the average data value for stress under a different type of lighting, then there is most likely no significant difference between the way these two lights affect stress. this is important because it allows us to understand that just because individual data points are different, doesn't mean that there is any strong difference between the fields of testing in general. Besides learning more about statistics, I also arranged for two participants to test next week once the physics classes finish studying the lights I am using.

this past week I focused on creating my project plan and build out in Asana. I learned a bit about statistics methods I will use this semester to ensure I get a quality sample of HPA students. I am currently working on creating a vocabulary bank for important statistics terms I will need to use. Last week we also did a "roast" of Mr. Halstead, where we gave him feedback on his teaching and the Independent Science course. This was productive and helped us become more efficient by doing things such as holding a scrum only once a week. In the coming week I will continue to focus on statistics knowledge and spend more time talking to Mr. Halstead about that aspect of my project. If I finish that early, I will begin organizing another list of test subjects to continue my isolated testing below the Energy lab.

This past week I have been wrapping up my experiments for the semester. I did only part of one test during the week because another group forgot to charge the headsets, so it died after the first section of the test I was doing. Last week I also focused on getting my presentation organized. I put together a powerpoint of a few images that relate to my project, such as the difference between the different types of lights picture. On the last class of the week, we did a practice presentation for about 4-5 minutes each. we then scored each other and gave feedback about what we liked and thought the presenter could do differently. In the coming week I have the deadline for turning in the white paper, and my presentation for Mr. Ferrel and Ms.Petteys on Tuesday afternoon.

My Asana tasks for the coming week are as follows:

• Finish the white paper
• finalize my presentation
• do another practice run for the presentation.

This week I did not accomplish as many tests as I had hoped to finish by today (Friday). Earlier in the week I emailed a few people who had previously inquired about participating in the testing, but I did not receive any responses. Yesterday I tested one person who is in my ISR period. During the testing the EEG Insight headset software was acting up, and the application kept closing unexpectedly. So a test that usually takes about 15 minutes ended up taking about 30. I was able to deal with this issue simply by waiting a few moments before reopening the program. The problem seemed to be resolved by the end of class, although it was unclear. In the next couple weeks I need to focus on running more tests so that I have a larger base of data on which to start working on possible trends and conclusions for my white paper.

My asana tasks for the coming week are:

• test 4 more people
• look at organizing participants a couple weeks in advance
• begin checking out the information i will need to include in my white paper.

This week I focused on running more tests on participants. Everything went fairly well. However, when I was running a test on Wednesday at lunch, I discovered that the sensors on one of the EEG headsets were dried out. I initially discovered this because when I was trying to get a reading for a participant's stress, it stayed at 99% for the entire round of lighting tests. I talked to Dr. Bill about this and we discovered that the sensors should be stored in saline solution. I am unsure wether the stress results of 99% for one of my participants was due to actual stress in the brain, or an equipment malfunction. I used the same EEG headset on another person that day to see if it still read a constant number. when I looked at the reading from this other person, the stress level was not at 99%. which makes it seem that the equipment was in fact working and I simply had a very stressed participant. in any case I put a note in my table about this. Next week I will continue to work further on many of the things I did this week.

Asana tasks for the week:

• test 4 more participants
• organize a more extensive list of future test subjects.
• begin looking at the time it will take me to finish this stage and transition into the next phase of my project. keeping in mind what i will have to present.

This week I worked on coordinating testing times with my participants. I found this a much more time consuming task than I had perviously anticipated. I was able to do a couple tests during lunch periods and Thursday F period. I have been able to coordinate fairly well with Lions and Elija regarding room usage via google calendar. At this point I have completed six tests, which is less than I had hoped for at this point. So I will need to begin doing more tests per class period in order to achieve the needed minimum of 40 tests. This week I also discovered that the test takes more than just fifteen minutes because I previously did not account for the time it would take to fit the headset to each participant. This part of the process alone can take about three to five minutes. This is something I will take into account when scheduling people for the tests.

Asana tasks for the coming week:

• test at least 4 more people
• talk to Lyons and Elija about getting more time in the room.
• contact participants and schedule times/ update google calendar

This week I began the actual experiment, testing the brain activity of people under different lighting conditions. So far everything is going well. I discovered that the time it takes to actually run a test is a bit longer than the time I gathered from a trial run with Elija. in the trial test i got that it would about 15 minutes total. however, in the actual tests I have been running, it takes about 18 minutes. this is not a big difference, but it is important to know so that my test subjects can be aware of how to fit this time block into their schedules. On Thursday of this week I had my meeting with Mr. Ferrell and Ms. Pettys. Everything went fairly well, but they had some concerns about the control of variables in my project because I am using human test subjects. They suggested I come up with a script for when i am running tests to put all test subjescts in the same mindset, wether they be friends or students I don't know very well. After the meeting I created a script, which I have used during all tests. so far I have completed tests on three subjects.

My Asana tasks for the coming week are:

• test at least four more people
• print out more coloring pages and bring more pens to replace the old ones.
• modify the google calendar which is shared with Lions and Elija for use of the "bat cave"

This week I got permission from Mr. Ford to send out emails asking for participants for my study. before I could do this though, I needed to create a solid procedure outline to ensure consistency between each trial round. I was able to do this and created a google doc with this information and a standard email response I will send to confirmed participants. on Thursday I ran through the entire procedure with Elija in order to get a good idea of how much time each lighting test will take and to work out any obstacles. I did not encounter any blockers in this process, and look forward to sending out emails asking for participants next week. Below is a link to the google doc i made that containing procedure and an email response template.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VqcdmBQTXWnIRndDM72I5YhZVHWV550_3BaQRpOue_c/edit

Asana tasks for the coming week:

• Send out emails
• Coordinate testing room usage and times with Elija and Lions.
• Talk to Dr. Bill and Mr. Halstead about times other than F period that would work for me to run tests.