Practice PT: Encoding an Experience -Aidan Briney




Component
Type
Number of Bits/Range
Description/Comments
Number of Players
number
2 bits (0-8 characters)
The maximum number of players to one group in golf is 4, so 2 bits is enough to encode the number of players in the tee time.
Time
number
2 bits (0-8 characters)
The time I set the tee time to be would probably be early in the morning, say from 7:15-9:45. With 3 characters, that is enough to record the time.
Course
ASCII
128 bits (0-16 characters)
The course’s title (“The Country Club”) in this case is exactly 16 characters. Course titles are usually less, so 128 bits is enough to encode the course name.
How I did it
ASCII
4,000 bits (0-500 characters)
How I did it would include an explanation of how I created the tee time, online or over the phone, what course I created it at, what method I used to create it, and other details. In any case, 500 characters would be sufficient to create this account.



Write no more than 300 words in response to this statement:
There are trade-offs when representing information as digital data.  
Citing examples from this project and what you’ve learned so far in the course, what does this mean to you? What are the considerations that go into representing information digitally? What are the trade-offs?  What’s easy? What’s hard? Why?

There are a few trade offs that result when you represent information as digital data. I think that the biggest trade off happens when you choose to represent too much information, and compress too many things so that the project becomes either confusing to follow or becomes cluttered with more bits than it started with. An example of this happening is in my project. I chose to represent “how I did it” with 4,000 bits. In my case, this is probably too many bits. To be safe, I chose 4,000 bits, when I could have been more precise and chosen fewer bits based on what I knew I was going to do. Because I used an excess number of bits, my project becomes cluttered with unused bits/characters/memory. This is one of the many trade offs that result when you represent information as digital data, while there are other trade offs that occur often.




Quick personal reflections on your encoding an experience:
Post in your blog the following questions and your answers to the questions:
  • Was your experience is a good choice? Why or why not?
-I do not think that my experience was the best choice for a project like this, because there is not that much to break down into categories. It is a rather straight forward process that I chose, and there is not that much that I could have broken down.
  • Did you identify the basic elements correctly? Did you miss any?
-Yes, I did identify the basic elements correctly.
  • Do you think anyone will be able to encode this data? What challenges do you think someone will have?
-I think that someone will have a challenge with encoding my process when they reach the left side of my graph, as the chart is cluttered on that side with excess bits.
  • Did you get good suggestions for the next steps from a classmate?

-Yes, I did. Amir gave me good advice on how to break down my steps more effectively, and how to organize my graph so that it easier to follow.

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