Question： Using specific examples from the last 3 days, in no fewer than 500-words, craft a reflection that addresses the following questions: Describe the importance of self-motivation and perseverance in a team setting. Describe the importance of teamwork and collaboration. Describe the importance of reflecting. Remember to give specific examples from these last 3 days. 

Alvin：In this remote learning environment, there is no restrictions, there is no guidance and there are lots of temptations. The only thing that make us to make outcomes is the willing to be great. At first, we just want to analyze the historical data of hypertension simply, I originally thought that we are going to collect the data and describe the pattern. But then, during the discussion with my groupmates, we started to push it forward by analyzing the different traits such age and lifestyle relating to hypertension. By incorporating physics knowledge, we are even able to predict one’s possibility of getting high blood pressure. This process was hard, compared to the original one, but we felt that only in this way can we make this project more meaningful. We are not just analyzing the data, we are actually using them to help with real life. So this is the aspiration of us, and I think if without this motivation to push harder, we would eventually get nothing from this project. Of course we have encountered many problems during these three days, such as we could not find proper data to link the height and hypertension, the programming process was really complicated and time-consuming given that the work  we want to do is difficult, and the real life blood in arteries is so complex that we need to search a lot and simplify the whole problem in order to achieve a reasonable model. But eventually we did it. 

As for teamwork and collaboration, they are super important in this project. As this is a interdisciplinary topic, we cannot rely purely on ourselves. So we basically use the skype all the time to communicate immediately when we have problems. This is super efficient, we reported our process and allocated workload at the beginning of each day.  In this way, we could make sure that we were on track and everyone had something to do. And after sometime, we would talk again about the latest situation. I think this is a good way to conduct teamwork, we would not interfere with each other and in the meanwhile we were aware of what others were doing and were able to provide help at once. We would not achieve anything without this efficient collaboration. 

About reflecting, I did reflection every day before I went to sleep. I thought about how I performance this day, was I efficient and so on. For example, in the first day, I felt I was not efficient in the afternoon when I looked back, so I identify the problem that I need to take a nap in the noon to keep energetic. So I slept a little bit in the next two days and it worked, I felt more efficient in the afternoons.

Tiger: In the past three days, I went to  a house on suburban areas of Beijing to participate the group four project. Because I am the only one in the house, I have to motivate myself to work, or I would have spend time on recreation. To only focus on the project, I set sub-goal with certain time nodes. For example, I set sub-goals such as downloading data by 12 am, disposing data by 17pm. Besides, I force myself to stay active in team collaboration so that I would not spend too much time on something else such as recreation. For example, in the first day of the project, I keep brain storming the idea and writing them all down and reading them to my teammate. In this process, since I don’t have time to pick up my phone, I was able to focus on the project. Also, I am very excited when I have the chance to use my CS skills to analyzing data and develop a GUI. So I stay up late to 2am to finish my work. 

As for the teamwork and collaboration, I believe the best team is not the team where every team member is super-student. Instead, the best team is the team where each member’s weakness is made up for by others. For example, I am not good at designing, so I may not be able to make a great poster. However, Wanda is very gifted on designing posters. Therefore, my weakness is made up by her. And that is how we collaborate: everyone does what he or she is best at. 

As for the reflection, I learned many important lessons. First, fancy algorithm does not mean “useful”. During the project, I had a task to find the trend and predict for the future. Even there was only twelve data points, I still insisted to use neural networks and random forest algorithm to predict. It turned out that the loss function the neural networks was incredibly big. At last, the simple algorithm, linear regression, make the best prediction. As Mr.Pete told me, stay simple, instead of using fancy algorithm,  I would use the most useful and applicable algorithm in the future. 

Wanda: In the past three days, our group did an excellent job in analyzing statistics and utilizing known knowledge to explain new information. Because we couldn’t communicate face-to-face, the efficiency has become a problem when there was no supervision. Accordingly, self-motivation and perseverance were the most crucial qualities that we should have during these days. Without self-motivation and perseverance, we would not be that productive and couldn’t accomplish targets we set previously. Thankfully, I had two great teammates who were very inspirational and helpful to me. Teamwork and collaboration were really important. Whenever I felt confused with the text I was research or the data that was sophisticated, they could reach out to help me immediately. Their expertise at different areas and their positive attitudes inspired me to challenge myself and solve problems confidently. For example, I was quite perplexed when I tried to understand the connection between blood flow and blood pressure, so I discussed with my teammates. Surprisingly, they immediately came up with many innovative and reliable ideas and even searched more contents to help me understand the logic behind. Thus, I found the error I made and quickly corrected it under the suggestion from my teammates. Furthermore, they did not only help me with discussions but also motivate me with their perseverance and preciseness. For example, I may be tired and gave up writing down the relationship between fluid mechanics and hypertension at night; however, my teammates were still discussing and analyzing data in the group chat at 11P.M. Their serious and diligent attitudes aspired and motivated me to do a perfect job with high quality and real implication. Additionally, reflecting was as necessary as doing the work because we could find out the errors we made and the flaws we needed to improve the next day. When I was writing blog reflection every time, I was astonished by the achievements we’ve accomplished and the imperfection that existed. Moreover, while recalling the targets we reached or not that day and setting targets the next day, I was amazed by the considerable progress we attained in just three days. Before reflecting and this project week, I would never imagine the progress I’ve done on researching and analyze hypertension. 

Question 1:What were your contributions today to your group? How was your energy level throughout the day? 

Alvin: Today I basically worked with the presentation of data. Yesterday we collected a lot of data from various sources, and what I did today is mainly graphing. I drew the graphs about the situation of hypertension regarding different genders, races, ages, and lifestyles including food intake, smoking and drinking. Besides this, I also helped with the script of the final video presentation by writing out an outline of what we need to talk about. As for energy level, I though it was pretty great during the morning, but in the afternoon I just felt really sleepy.
Tiger: Today, I made more analysis about the data we collected yesterday. Since our topic is about essential hypertension, I did data mining to find the which factors most strongly caused the essential hypertension. Because the data has 12 dimensions, I used Random Forest algorithm to categorize the data into a few groups and count which group of data contain the biggest number of essential hypertension cases. I was pretty energetic during the day since I drunk lot of tea. The following picture is an example.

Wanda: Today, I analyzed how essential hypertension occurs by using physics knowledge I learnt, and I also enumerated physical factors that contributed to blood flow and blood pressure. Furthermore, I also listed the targets we reached today and the targets for tomorrow. I was pretty energetic and efficient in the morning, but I felt a little sleepy in the afternoon, so I took a nape in the lunch break to solve this problem.

Question2:Which area did you put the most motivated today? 

Alvin: outlining the basic structure of our video. At first, I felt kind of confused about what we should include, so I decided to generate a clear structure. I arranged the whole process including introduction, data presentation and analysis, conclusion, and reflection. And then I shared this with my teammate to get their agreement. Based on this, we can start to write our script.
Tiger: I was  most motivated developing a GUI where users input their information such as their height, weight, sex, age, cholesterols level, and glucose level and the program would return their probability of having essential hypertension. I am really exited about developing a user-friendly GUI. 

Wanda: I was most motivated while doing my own analysis about the link between fluid dynamics knowledge and essential hypertension because it’s satisfactory to utilize knowledge I learnt to induce and explain a phenomenon that was new. Also, I found out that the logic between blood pressure, blood flow, and blood speed was sophisticated and needed to be explained by utilizing different concepts, including flow rate, B Bernoulli’s principle，and the Hagen–Poiseuille equation.

Question3:Which area did you feel the least motivated? Why? 

Alvin: Graphing. Because it is bored, all I have to do is simply copy and paste the data, choose a proper types of graph and draw them out.
Tiger: The least motivated thing is probably tackling the data. It is because the cache of BlueJ is too small to handle 70 thousands lines of data, so I have to use another programming language to analyze the data. Therefore, I missed the chance of using knowledge I gained from CS class to use Java to handle the data.

Wanda: I felt the least motivated while facing modeling and data because I was not good at modeling and making graphs on the computer. Although I knew pretty well how to analyze the trend, I still didn’t want to confront with models and graphs by myself.

Question4:What are some ways you could have persevered through these times? What are your own personal goals for the final day?

Alvin: I think hanging on the Skype is really a good thing as once we have problems we can talk with teammates immediately. I remember when I find the data about gender is not correct, I was able to inform my teammates at once and find our the solution together. This just felt like we are working together. 

And for the final day, I think I can improve my efficiency, and be more focused on the work. I will finish the part of Biology, which is my assigned expertise, and also help my teammates if they have any problems.
Tiger:  Firstly, I suggest that when we face some problems that confuse us, we should have a meeting to solve those problems together. Second, If I am stuck by some problem, I should not spend all the time I have on that problem. Instead, I should leave it and do something else to increase the efficiency. For example, I had some trouble with the data because the data is not clear. I don’t know what does “1” means. Instead of figuring it out by myself, I asked my teammate for help. After that, my teammate went to the original web and told me “1” stands for “women”. 

Wanda: First, I suggest everyone taking a nape during lunch break because we should let our brain rest in order to have a better efficiency and make fewer errors in the afternoon. Second, if modeling and making graphs are difficult, I will ask my group mates who are both very helpful, good at CS, and collaborative for help. Teamwork has a better strength than working individually, and different expertise can analyze the same problem from various perspectives.
My own personal goals for the final day are: first, I will finish a final draft of my own section and revise the whole research with my group mate; second, I will design the poster and make the final video with my group mates; third, I will write the blog reflection on time and remind my group mates to hand in every materials on time. 

Question1: What category and sets of database did your group decide on? 

We deicide to choose Healthcare. Our group is going to investigate in how to reduce the risk of getting essential hypertension. And we searched the website of WolframAlpha, WHO, American CDC and some other official government institute as we believe this will be reliable. The figure 1 exibits information related to Essential hypertension.

Question2:  What do you think can be the implications of your analysis specifically in your field? In the world? 

In biology, we are interested to find our the cause of different disease, find therapies and promote a better lifestyle to people. Using the data we have, we can conclude how does our daily behaviors like eating influence the probability of catching high blood pressure problem. High blood pressure is a widespread disease in our world, and lots of scientist are trying to find the medication. In this project,  we can show the people what can they do personally to prevent hypertension, which is cool.

By analyzing physical factors and behavioral factors, we can find out the relationship between essential hypertension and different factors, therefore suggesting people to control these factors by maintaining healthy habits. Our group will make a credible analysis with precise statistics that can be applied to both in the field of healthcare and our daily lives.

In CS, we could use programming skills to find the pattern inside a large amount of data and use correlation analysis to find the relationship between factors. In this project, We did find a great amount of data. If those data does not cover all range, we would use algorithm to grab the trend of data and make up for all the range. Beside, after the model for high blood pressure are constructed, we would use System Modeler to simulate the process of such fluid motion. the field of CS could provide statistical analysis that further validate the research, which is very useful.  

Question3:How do you feel about your group mates and the expertise that they will be bringing into the group? Are there possible conflicts? How does your group plan on resolving conflict?

Tiger: I think we made perfect cooperation. Though 10 minutes of discussion, we successfully settled down our topic and each one of us was assigned work to do. In 2 pm, we all finished the work assigned. It is my honor to have such two teammate. 

Wanda:My group mates are very efficient and innovative. They do not only come up with new ideas but also bring the knowledge they learned in CS, physics, and biology class into discussions. There are possible conflicts but are resolved by working as a team. For instance, I know physics knowledge but I don’t know how to model it on the computer; then, my group mate who learns CS will help me do this task together. 

Alvin: I think they are really good, and our different expertise fit well in the topic of hypertension. Physics can be used to explain the direct cause of hypertension using the knowledge of fluid mechanics. As for CS, we basically depend on it to analyze the data like making prediction and so on.