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Week One: June 1 |
I had to start my DREU Experience by first learning Emory
University's campus. I know I rode around the campus at least 10 times
looking for buildings and parking but eventually I found the Mathematics and
Sciences Building. Due to my lack of knowledge in the areas of Privacy
Preserving and Record Linkage, I began my research experience by doing alot of reading. These are the following papers I began
to read this week: Efficent Private Record Linkage. Blocking-Aware Private
Record Linkage. Privacy Preserving Schema and
Data Matching. BMC
Medical Informatics and Decision Making. Outside of the internship I did nothing. I
spent most of my time trying to mentally get adjusted to Atlanta. I am used
to only driving 15 minutes at the most to get to a friend's house. In Atlanta
nothing is close by, so I didn't really leave my cousin's house because gas
was not cheap. I did learn how to get to Emory, my roommate's, LaToya,
parents' house and back to my cousin's house. Covington Highway was my best
friend! I did become addicted to Quik Trip Slushes.
I had to have one everyday. I always got the same
one, Watermelon mixed with Green Apple. |
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Week Two: June 8 |
During our meeting, Li and I discussed the correct and effective
way to read research papers. She told me to read critically and take notes.
Also, I am to write a summary on each paper I read and the summary should
include the main problem, techniques proposed for the problem, what I liked
about the paper and its solution to the problem, what I disliked about the
paper and its solution to the problem, and what I would do to help the
problem. My little sister 18th birthday was June 12th
so I went home for a family road trip to Tallahassee, Florida. We learned
that taking my 2year old baby sister on an hour and fifteen minute road trip
without a portable DVD player is a disaster! She loves SpongeBob & Dora
and when she can't watch them she acts like it's the end of the world! When
we got to Tallahassee, we went to the Governor's Square mall then to Olive
Garden and lastly to Best Buy. I wasn't feeling well that week, but I made
sure I was there for my sister on her first day of adulthood. |
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Week Three: June 15 |
During week three, I continued reading the research papers and
summarizing them. Li planned a luncheon meeting for Hitaxi
and I to meet a few graduate students. We had an
interesting conversation about graduate school funding and classes, Ph.D programs, and job placement among other things. |
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Week Four: June 22 |
Reading about FRIL, which is also known as fine-grained
integration and linkage tool. FRIL can be used for comparative record
linkage. It can be very helpful in privacy preserving record linkage with
comparing records. |
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Week Five: June 29 |
Read one research paper from the group of research papers given
to me during first few weeks of the internship. I was asked by Li to prepare
a board presentation on the paper. The presentation is due by the next weekly
group meeting. I skimmed over the different paper during the remainder of the
week in order to choose the one I would like to present. |
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Week Six: July 6 |
The paper I chose was Privacy Preserving Schema & Data
Matching. During the weekly group meeting I began to present my presentation.
Unfortunately, I became a little overwhelmed with nervousness and could not
make it through my presentation. I knew the information but my thoughts
became blank. Luckily for me, Li is a very patient and understanding and she
gave me a second chance to present next week. Darla, Alex & LaToya
took the road trip to Atlanta with me. One day while i was in my office, they
left to do whatever they had to do. When they came back, Darla had bought the
new Big Boi(of Outkast) Sir luscious Left
foot album. After they picked me up, we stopped by to see our friend Mike
from school at his my office in Downtown Atlanta. During that visit we
discovered Mike and Darla had never met before. We stood outside the office
talking for about 30 minutes. We tried to get Mike to buy us gas so we can
drive all around the city, but he wouldn't so we went back to Albany early. I
drove until we got right outside of Atlanta, then I got sleepy and I stopped
at a gas station to take a nap. Darla wasn't happy with me stopping to take a
nap, so she hopped in the driver's seat and drove the rest of the way home. |
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Week Seven: July 13 |
I spent the entire next week preparing for a make-up
presentation over the Privacy Preserving Schema and Data Matching paper. I
used the research paper reading skills that Li gave me and read. As I was
reading, I broke the paper down into parts and purposes. The first question
used to help me read and understand the paper was "What is the purpose of
this paper?". Then from there I continued on to
break sound the paper section by section to better understand what the paper
is about and the significance of that section to the topic. Latoya Alex & I dub
this week the Rick Ross Teflon Don week. We road all around Atlanta listening
to the Teflon Don album. While we were there we stopped by LaToya's parents'
house so she could see her family. When her little sister got home from
school she was really excited to see LaToya. |
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Week Eight & Nine: July 20-August 2 |
The goal of weeks 8 and 9 is to review the implementation of the
paper, download its data set and reproduce the experiments that had all
previously been done. Luckily for me, the graduate student I was paired with,
Liyue, had actually done all of the work and knew
where it was located. I sent her a quick email and she told me where to find
the work. Our group meeting was at Top Spice, a Thai restaurant. I am very
open-minded about trying new things. I had never been to a Thai restaurant
before so this was a new experience for me. There were about 10 people at our
table so we ordered almost 10 different dishes. I tried every dish on the
table. As usual, there were some dishes I liked and some I dish liked. I
specifically did not like anything with peanut sauce and I am not a fan of
baked fish. After we finished eating, we made our way back to campus. My
friends Latoya & Alex come to Atlanta with me. After I left the office
for the day, we hung out at Stonecrest Mall one day.
I met some of Latoya classmates from high school that go to college in Mississippi.
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Week Ten: August 3 |
While trying to run the experiments previously created from the
privacy record linkage and schema matching paper, I also had to learn how to
use the Eclipse software. In the beginning I kept downloading the wrong
Eclipse software. At my home institution, we have only jGrasp
and NetBeans. When I finally downloaded the eclipse
classic software, I tried to just run the programs from where they were
already saved on the experiments. That didn't work so I had to review the
Eclipse tutorials. While going through the tutorials I had to keep the Google
search open to research the various components of Eclipse. Eventually the
tutorials began to bore me so I only used Google search to get straight to
the point. I researched how to import files, run and debugging programs, and
create new programs. The biggest problem I had was running the programs which,
but I watched a tutorial on YouTube about how to use Eclipse. During this last
week some of my close friends, LaToya and Mona-Lisa came to Atlanta and we
went to a Jamaican club. It was a different experience for me because I am
used to hip-hop or jazz clubs. Reggae music takes you to an entirely
different place. The people that were in the club were around our parents'
age. I really wasn't too excited to be there so I sat down the entire time.
We did have a good time though. |