Theme 4 - Quantity has a quality all its own

The paper I have chosen this time around, now realising that this is the second out of three, is also a study related to digital video. It is called:

"A Quantitative Study of Video Duplicate Levels in YouTube"

About the paper

Now I could go on explaining, indeed in great detail, all the magnificent aspects and splendid particular solutions they come up with. I wont however, since I think it is far more beneficial to explain the overall idea and more importantly the possible outcome of the results.

But before I begin, let me give you a quick summary on the background, in an attempt to persuade you of the importance of this papers like the one above. As I mentioned in one of my earlier blog posts, one of the great challenges, within the field of information technology, in the future is he increasing usage of bandwidth. The amount of data being sent through our various forms of tele-communicative infrastructure is increasing a lot faster than we are able to physically expand the latter.  

As a bunch of students on the way to becoming engineers, with a mastery of media technology none the less, I do hope that the above statement creates an uncontrollable knee-jerk reaction for each and everyone of you, in the form of a simple question; What can we do about it? How do we solve the problem?

And this is where it gets interesting, of course we could always throw another 400 miles of TCCs (Transatlantic Communication Cable), or create some other similar increase in physical capacity, but there is also another way. By finding new ways of handling the data, both in transit and on site, we are able to increase the efficiency, rather than the productivity, of the data we hare managing.

This particular paper proposes one such efficiency measure, by creating ways for similar (or even duplicate) youtube-videos to share the same actual information. Instead of storing four similar video, you only store three, while the fourth can be put together using the other three.

I do not know about you, but to me such an idea sounds amazing, it is indeed a fascinating testament of just how far we have reached in fields such as image-handling and signal processing.  

To quantify a set of qualities

Upon reading the text

I thought that the idea behind the paper was brilliant, how we are affected by things we perceive and how "good" or "bad" is related to circumstances is always fascinating. Do I "become" a better drummer when I "am" a certain character? Does the environment influence me at all? Or the various forms of feedback? And although I thought that the paper focused on the wrong things, illusion of body rather than immersion of place, I think it really goes along well with classical psychology.

What did shock me however, was the fact that the "choice of body", when successfully applying a strong illusion of body ownership, made a significant difference. I would have thought that such prejudice (black man being the better drummer) was long gone. 

Question 1

The main benefit of a quantitative study is, and this might come across as obvious, the strength in numbers. While such an answer is somewhat simplified, and definitely in need of some elaboration, it is still very much the truth of the matter.

The general idea is that by quantifying data, in some field or of some population, the study is able to measure (often in the form of statistics) a specified set of events in order to come up with a recommended course of action. In other words, a quantitative study aims to determined the probability of what is, or in some situations what is not, through the help of structured techniques.

Question 2

A qualitative study on the other hand, aims to gain an understanding of various facets or fields with a minimum amount of statistical data. Such a study can also be used to provide the foundation in order to generate new ideas and hypothesises.

The most important distinction however, is the fact that qualitative research is often employed when one is aiming for new, ground breaking, exploratory studies. It is used when we have little to no idea what to expect, in order to both define a problem and figure out what needs to be done about it.

In some sense I also think it is correct to say that most qualitative studies are based on field research and personal experience.


Conclusion
As I understand it, in a broad set of terms, a quantitative study will measure some event in a population or sample, by means of gathering and observing some sort of statistical data. In this way, the knowledge is gained through analysing what can be observed, whilst qualitative studies instead tries to catch or generate knowledge from the actual participants.