Out of all the sciences, my most favourite was Biology. Couldn't wrap my head around Chemistry or Physics for the life of me, but Biology brought me a strange sort of joy. Unlike the other two sciences, Biology allowed me to understand and make sense of the things around me that could be easily seen and discerned, and to look at my various body parts and think about them mechanically, like parts of a machine (or in my case, a very badly functioning one). I've been thinking about Biology again recently however because of a very silly reason: sampling frames.
Context: I'm taking Mixed Methods for research now over Summer, and I'm surprised by how much I'm enjoying it.
In my Summer A class now we've been doing a fair amount of work on different types of research methods (surveys, interviews, focus groups, etc.), and for the past week have been focusing on surveys. I can't say I thought very much about surveys before, but since encountering the material I realised I had learnt a bit about surveys before - from Biology class. There was a page or two on conducting population surveys of plants, and I remember reading about the different types of methodology one could use to count the flora (and maybe very small fauna?). One method however I remembered vividly, because of the image I had in my mind every time I read it: the random sampling frame. For some reason, I envisioned a scientist grasping a literal white coloured frame and tossing it around at random, and that image always amused me. Now donkey years later (maybe 10?), every time the term "sampling frame" is mentioned in class, I cannot help but smile and imagine someone throwing a frame around.
It's funny what one remembers from school.
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