Research Log Entry 10/29/07

1. What was discussed today in class?
Well today we discussed how to look at magazines and distinguish them as popular, scholarly, and trade. We learned the difference between them and how to tell them apart, and also we learned how to find the information page in magazines.

2. Describe the difference among a "popular", a "trade/professional," and a "scholarly" journal.
The difference between the three is that popular journals are very appealing and really are topics that are of interest to the reader, while scholarly is very plain and is only to inform someone on a specific topic. While trade journals are somewhat appealing and deal only with people interested in the specific trade.

3. What are the advantages and disadvantages of print and electronic forms of periodicals?
The advantages of periodicals is that you get views on topics from different sources and can add more appeal to your research rather than just all textbooks. But the disadvantage is it could be biased or even not really valid or helpful.

Research Log Entry 10/25/07

1. Write a brief topic sentence and statement of exploration for your topic.

Well my previous topics had nothing really to do with my cluster but were rather something that I have great interest in. So after much deliberation my I decided my topic would be the importance of the number 0 to history.

2. Formulate appropriate search terms that you might use to being your research process. Some search terms I would use in my research topic would be History and zero and importance, history of zero, zero.

3. Examine the various library databases available to you through this library and list the possible databases you might use to begin your search process. Britannica Online, CQ Researcher, ProQuest Newspapers, Lexis-Nexis, and Academic Search Premier.

Research Log Entry 10/22/07

1. What was discussed today in class? Well in class we discussed and practiced how to find certain things in databases and encyclopedia and used Britannica Online, CQ Researcher, ProQuest Newspapers, Lexis-Nexis, and Academic Search Premier for different searches of the same topic.

2. What points were particularly important to you and why? Well the points that were very important to me was the fact that some databases and search engines will not have what you are looking for while others to, so in order to get a good amount of research it is best to try multiple databases.

3. When engaging in the search process, what techniques might you use to ensure that you can continue your exploration without running into a dead end? Well in order to ensure you don't run into dead ends, try to change certain words and take out or adjust words in order to find more searches and never stop trying different things.

Research Log Entry 10/18/07

1. What was your final question?
What is the importance of prime numbers to mathematics?

2. What terms did you use to conduct your search? Did they work or not? Why?
The terms I used to conduct my search was prime number or importance and mathematics. But it did not really work no matter what searches I did because the topic is just to vague and I couldn't really find anything worth while

3. Did you need to try alternate terms? If so, what terms did you choose? Did your new terms work any better?
Yes I did try alternate terms like just prime numbers and mathematics but that search ended up being to big and wasn't really helpful. I also tried other things, but to no avail, maybe I just need to make the question somewhat better.

Research Log Entry 10/15/07

1. What was discussed today in class? We discussed the importance of databases and what databases are and we did an exercise that showed us the importance of organizing and searching databases. Along with the exercise we learned the phrase for searching databases that or is more.

2. What points were particularly important to you and why? I liked learning how to search the database and it was important to me because if I ever need research for a paper or assignment I have a good source of information that is easier to access than rummaging through google searches for hours looking for credible sources.

3. How can you use the techniques discussed in class today? Well the or is more and using and correctly in searches can will help me narrow down my searches more in the database and allow me to get the information I need more efficiently.

4.What ideas and thoughts do you have about this search strategy? Well I think this was very necessary information to help us with college papers and research, and I am glad I am able to navigate a database with more ease than if I hadn’t had this lesson.

And I apologize for being so late, it simply slipped my mind. I take full responsibility, and I am not saying your class is not important to me, I just got caught up in studying for my statistics midterm next Tuesday, since it is my first real college midterm, that it slipped my mind. I am sincerely sorry and I do not expect any you to go easy on me for this momentary lapse of reason.

Research Log Entry 10/11/07

1. What was your first question? My first question was what is the highest prime number?

2.List all the intermediate questions that you formed between the first question and your final question? How do they find these high prime numbers? What do they use to calculate it? Who discovered these numbers? Who is Mersenne?

3. What approaches and ideas did you implement in each of these stages? For each of these questions I searched for an answer and each answer led me to a new question that I had to ask. After I found the highest prime number, I wondered how they found it, and I searched it on google, and then I wondered how they calculated it and did another search, and I became curious about who found it.

4. How would you evaluate your final question? Is it more complex? Do you think you could continue further with this process and come up with something even more complex? I would evaluate my final question by doing some research on Marin Mersenne and find out who he was and how he developed these numbers and what exactly it is. It is more complex because there is a big history behind Mersenne Prime Number. Yes I believe if I continued I would find more complex questions.

5. What other questions might help you to continue your exploration? Who discovered the idea of prime numbers, and what is a titanic prime?

Research Log Entry 10/8/07

1. What was discussed today in class? Today in class we discussed different medians of news from different newspapers like the SF chronicle or USA today and the differences in articles and the spillover. Along with that we discussed different ways to advance searches and we talked about del.ios.us and we talked about the difference between objective and objectionable. Then we played telephone.

2.What points were particularly important to you and why? I guess the parts that were important to me would be del.ious.us because it looked very useful to keep my favorites on different computer and could be quite handy to me.

3. What change will you make in your approach to research? I will try to make my searches on search engines more efficient with better key words, and I will also cite it well so that other can follow my work.

4. What other ideas and thoughts do you have about researching the authority of a source, whether it's news, a website, or some other information source? The best way in my opinion to check the authority of the source is by the .com, because a .edu or .org would probably more reliable. And to tell it is news or other information would have to be a personal judgment you could only acquire through practice.

5. What other ideas and thoughts do you have about topic development? I think it is good for us to learn to discern the difference between information and research from a biased article or media that would tarnish a good research paper.

Research Log Entry 10/4/07

1. What question did you try to answer?
What is the largest prime number?

2. What search engine or engines did you use?
I used google as my primary search engine.

3. What search terms did you use to ask your question?
What is the largest prime numbers? I did not have to do a second search because my answer was correctly answered in one search.

4. What was your evaluation of your results? My evaluation of my results have checking several sites is that the largest prime number is 2^32,582,657 − 1 and is 9,808,358 digits long!

5. What other search strategies could you try? I could try several different search engines as well as several different search phrases along with more advanced and precise searches. But my question was answered without much effort.

6. What other questions came into your mind to continue your exploration?
What is a Mersenne number?

Researcg Log Entry 10/1/07

1. What was discussed today in class that you knew already? Well I was not able to find the room, so I cannot answer this very well, but by looking at the URL sheet, I knew URL stood for Uniform Resource Locator and what .edu, .com, .gov, .net, .mil, .org stood for.

2. What was discussed today in class that was new to you? Well one thing that was discussed that was new to me is that http stood for Hyper text transfer protocol and that html was hypertext markup language.

3. If you were given an assignment to do research and you chose the web as one strategy for your search, what three important elements do you need to consider?
1. Good Keywords, be able to optimize your searches
2. Try multiple searches with different phrases
3. What is your best search engine

4. What other ideas and thoughts do you have about exploring the web? In order to be efficient in exploring the web, you must be confident, and know good starting points, like google or wikipedia. Once you have good starting stone, you can start to branch out into other things on the web.