• Question: what percentage of your work is done on a screen or device?

    Asked by flumpington24 to Claire, Joanna, Kapila, Renata, Suzanne on 24 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Suzanne Harvey

      Suzanne Harvey answered on 24 Jun 2013:

      In my job it’s variable… You can programme a device for data collection, so that when you’re out in the forest making notes on baboon behaviour it is easier than writing with pen and paper – you can make it so that each behaviour is on the touch screen.

      Outside of field work, a lot of time is spent on a computer as we do acoustic analyses of the monkey sounds. The software for this is free, so if you want a go you can download it! Audacity is a good free programme, you can look at you own voice using it, and human voices look very similar to monkey ones…

    • Photo: Renata Medeiros

      Renata Medeiros answered on 24 Jun 2013:

      I think about 40% of my work is done on the computer, it could be worse! 🙂

    • Photo: Joanna Bryson

      Joanna Bryson answered on 24 Jun 2013:

      A *lot* of my work is on a computer, because I build computer simulations to understand animal behaviour. But you can’t only do that, you have to understand what you are modelling & find out about what it means. So for that I need to read lots of papers or books (though often now we read papers on screen), but really that isn’t enough either. So I try to go visit the people who have data from real animals so that I can talk to them & I can see the species they study and observe them a little myself. Also, I go to conferences and ask people if my models make sense that way. Conferences are one of the most fun things in science, you get to talk about your work & everyone gets to try to tell you why you are wrong! It sounds scary, and it can be a little like a sport that way, but actually when you talk to people & they ask good questions you think more & better. That’s part of why I did this! And also, actually if they like your theory, or if it helps them understand something, they will often tell you cool new results that help you, and that is REALLY fun. And you learn from everyone else’s talks too!

    • Photo: Claire El Mouden

      Claire El Mouden answered on 25 Jun 2013:

      It depends. I really like working on a computer, and I often spend days working on it….but then I also go for days without.

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