Interpretation

Throughout the semester we have widely used mathematical visuals to interpret the world around us through numbers, charts and even words. By taking the skills we have learned this semester in this U-course, it has made working with numbers and other mathematical visuals much easier because I have been given a better way to look at them and how to interpret mathematical visuals into real world scenarios and solutions. One of the more personal examples for myself is the Personal Learning Plan, in which I got to calculate the weight of my semester’s assignments through charts and graphs to pick the best plan I thought I would like for myself and how it would most benefit my grade and my learning experience. By being able to work with the data provided in that assignment it really required me to look at everything individually and also as a whole to get everything right in my mind for the big picture. In the assignment for Team Demographics, we took quantitative data and further simplified, and narrowed it down to be interpreted to the proper demographics for our game’s target audience which was teenager in Butte County between the ages of fifteen and seventeen. Although for our beta testing and final presentation of our serious game and the Sense of Place night, we didn’t ever get to play with the actual target audience. We were, however, able to properly identify who and where the target audience was through census data that the group researched, and once we figured out our target audience we could properly cater the game and its rules to that audience that we had researched. Without being able to interpret or find the data to do this we would have a much more difficult time with finding the correct avenue to make our game the best possible experience for those who would play it, and to instill the lesson we wanted to portray. After our first beta test we were lucky enough to have resources to allow us to poll our peers who tested the game and learn any pros, cons, or suggestions to which they might have, along with general mood and flow of the game. In our poll, the application that we used was able to generalize the data and present it to the group in a way that we were able to interpret to figure out what would be necessary to improve the level of effectiveness, flow and fun to our serious game. By having those charts for the polls we were able to finalize the game to make it a ton of fun for the Sense of Place night and it was great to see our audience enjoy the game too.