All reflections

Reflection on expert advisers

I have asked Mr. P to be one of my expert advisers. I want Mr. P to help me when I am

organizing all the statistics that I collected during my test and put them into different data.

Mr. P would give me suggestions on whether I use the correct calculation formula or

mathematical methods to interpret the data. I would probably also double-check with Mr. P

on how I will be collecting data so the statistics I collected fit the purpose of my research

project. I believe Mr. P would be a suitable advisor for this part of my research project

because he is my calculus teacher and he knows more about math and data sorting than I do.

Another teacher I have asked to be my expert adviser is Mr. Pangier. I want to ask Mr. P to

help me with the structure and grammar of my writing. Mr. Pangier would give me advice on

how I should structure my research paper better to fit the AP Capstone research standard and

also how I could write my paper in a style that is similar to an expert in my field of research,

which I believe is one of the requirements for our research paper. I believe Mr. Pangier would

be a suitable adviser because he is one of the two capstone teachers in our school which

means he would understand how to construct capstone paper better than most of the other

teachers in our school.

I would like to ask Ms. Harmon to be my expert adviser as well. I want to ask Ms. Harmon to

give me suggestions on the overall direction of my project. I know Ms, Harmon probably can

not tell me too much because she is the teacher of my capstone class, but I think she is

allowed to give me some sort of advice on whether my project is doing what I want it to do.

Even though this research project is self-directed and the adviser can only give minimum
suggestions on the direction of the project, I still want to ask Ms. Harmon to be my expert

adviser because she is my capstone teacher and she probably will be the one teacher that

knows the most about my project.

Reflection on method

I will be doing an experimental study on the correlation between showing players their

statistics during halftime and whether they improve on a specific category of statistics. I will

be showing the team their shooting percentage and turnover numbers during halftime and see

whether the shooting percentage goes up and turnover numbers go down during the second

half. I will be recording the differences in these two categories of statistics in both individual

performance and team overall performance. I will also be doing a survey that will be asking

the players how they felt about getting the chance of seeing their statistics during halftime.

The feedback I receive from Sari was that players' mood could affect their performance

which will potentially affect the results of my experiment. This changed my original

approach on how I was going to do the experiment as I originally was planning on doing

multiple experiments within two weeks and get all the data I needed, but with Sari’s feedback

on how I should minimize the effects of players moods on their performance, I decided that I

will do multiple experiments on scrimmages that happened on the same day of the week and

time but just different weeks. For example, I will experiment on the scrimmage that happened

at 4 pm every Friday afternoon for three weeks in a role. This would help me minimize the

effects that day of the week and time of the day have on the players. None of the literature is

similar to the method I am using because I am using the statistics during the game and most

of the literature I found uses the statistics after the season is over.

Reflection on Literature review

What did you learn from your peer review?

● I need to organize my lit review better. After reading Ray’s paper, I realized that I

should separate my sources into smaller groups and have different parts in my lit

review for sources from different perspectives. I should clearly show the different

perspectives of my study then connects all the perspectives to explain the gap that my

study will be filling.

● Also, from reading Ray’s essay and the advice he gave me, I learned how to

synthesize my sources better and avoid listing sources in my lit review.

What do you plan to change? Why?

● I plan on reorganizing my lit review into four different sections which include the

effects of statistics on professional basketball players, the mental effects of rankings

in an education setting, the effects of statistics on high school basketball players, and

my gap. I believe that structuring my lit review this way could more effectively and

clearly show the gap of how no studies have been done on the effects of

statistics/ranking in a high school sports setting.

● I would also synthesize my sources better as Ray told me that I was kind of listing out

my sources in the lit review instead of synthesizing them. I think this could help my

lit review to become like a smooth explanation of what my gap is instead of a section

that lists all the sources and point out the gap separately.

Is there anything your peer suggested you change, but you plan to keep? Why?

● No, I think all the suggestions Ray gave me were really helpful and were things that I

need to work on.

Reflection on peer review for intro and lit review

There are a few parts I plan on changing in my introduction and lit review section. First, I

will try to contextualize the issue that my study is focusing on more and emphasize the

potential negative impacts if my study is not conducted as that could help the readers

understand why my study is necessary. Second, I will work on connecting different sources

more as Daisuke mentioned that some of my sources could be used together to show the gap

that my study is focusing on better. Lastly, I will try to see the parts of my writing that

Daisuke said are kind of repetitive. If I find parts that were repetitive then I will improve on

them, but if I feel like all parts were necessary then I won't change anything.

Reflection on peer review of results/findings section

Something I will add to my results section is statistical tests for different data. I was planning

on doing multiple t-tests for different data and putting them in my discussion section.

However, Ray reminded me that I should put the numbers I get from t-tests in my results

section since I did mention that I am doing t-tests for data in my method section. Another

thing I will add is titles for different graphs and tables, as Ms. Harmon mentioned in class

that even if the graph already has a title on it when we copy it from the google sheet, we still

need to put our own titles into our paper. Something I will keep is my graphs. Even though

most of the papers in my study mainly use only tables, I believe certain data in my study can

be presented more clearly through graphs.

Reflection on revision of discussion section

I think one thing I will definitely change is some of my word choice in my writing. As Ms.

Harmon mentioned, try not to use phrases like “I believe” and also try to be more specific

when I say “the use of statistics”. Another thing I need to change is try to exclude talking

about what I observed throughout the study and use it as evidence or data. Since I did not
mention in my method section that observation will be a data collecting method, I should

avoid using it so I would not hurt the credibility of my study. Lastly, I need to write in a way

that could let people who have no idea about my study be able to understand. I need to be

clear and detailed about everything and remember that there is a lot of information that I

know but readers do not. I think all the suggestions I received were genuinely helpful; there

wasn’t a suggestion that I felt was not useful.

Reflection on presentation

I think my slides are set and I have most I want on my slides already. I stuttered a lot so I will

try to write down a script and memorize it. I think when I am more confident and know the

script better, I will stutter less. Another thing I will do is probably talk a little bit slower since

that will also help with my stutter situation. While memorizing the script I will also pay

attention to whether I miss any information on explaining my tables and graphs.