Research

I think that research is very important and a lot of people, including me, don’t realize how often we do it now that we have phones and the internet at our disposal. People need research to learn and explore new ideas, which is the same reason why we do it. When people don’t know how to do something research can give the answer or help you arrive at one. For example, when I learn to play a song on piano, I look up the song. However, a lot of times some of the notes or chords are wrong, and I may have to find a second or third page and try and match up what is right and what fits where, so I can learn the song. 

I think researchers use different methods of research because not every question can be answered in the same way, not to mention there is almost always some sort of error or outlier. Take a high school project for example, I asked about 30 people if they knew how to do stuff like write a check, apply for a job, or change a tire, and then used those statistics to try and answer whether schools should teach those skills. However, this would not have worked in something like our first project for this class, because if I ask people if Eli Manning should be in the Hall of Fame, the results will most likely be skewed based whether they pay attention to football or if they are Giants fans. For that project, I asked a few people that I know pay attention to football their views, and listened to or read articles from sports analysts or players. I wouldn’t say the concept or even how to research confuses me for the most part. I think one part that definitely confuses me about research is why wikipedia can’t be used as a viable source.