Monday, April 14, 2014

Database and Graphs to Visualize Themes


            For our Application and Integration Project, we will be creating a table in a database that includes information about all the texts we have read in this class.  The table will have the following categories:  Title, Author, Date of Publication, Location, Self-Knowledge, Society, Justice, Green World, Gender Roles, Politics, Lies, Money as a Motivator, Stereotypes, and Patriotism.  Databases are useful because they hold a lot of information and can be manipulated to show only certain entries.  We are only creating one table for this project, but databases can contain many tables and pull related information from all of them at the same time. 
            We are focusing our table on the different themes that were present in the comedies we read this semester.  Each play that is entered into the table will have either a ‘Yes’ or a ‘No’ in the column for each theme, depending on if the play contains that specific theme.  By inserting this information into the table in the database, we will be able to select the criteria that determines which information will be displayed.  For example, we can tell the database to print out a list of titles and authors that have a theme of gender roles.  The criteria can be as simple or as complicated as we choose.  A complicated criteria, for example, could look something like this:  show only titles of all books written in Germany between the dates of 1800 and 1900 that have themes of money as a motivator and lies but not the theme of Green World. 
          
           We will also use the database to create easier to understand graphs or graphics by looking at specific parts of the table and finding relationships or correlations in the information. An example would be a bar graph of how many books have a specific theme. This project will help us answer questions like what role do certain themes play in the plays we have discussed and what does a certain theme being used more often tell us about that theme and the structure of comedies.


Megan Bell
Timmy Eisenbraun

3 comments:

  1. I always like focusing on the big picture, and having this information organized and easy to access would be very beneficial for several different types of projects such as research papers and group projects. Manipulating, comparing, and analyzing information is always helpful, and this would definitely show this class in a different perspective. I like it!

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  2. I'm confused on how you guys will do this, but very interested to see how the project will turn out. Reading about a graph is totally different from seeing the complete visual aid. I bet the end result will be extremely helpful once everyone is able view it.

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  3. This sounds like a great way to identify the correlations in all of the plays we have read and, like Carol said, I feel like this AIP could really help the class understand the "big picture." Good luck!

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