With my most recent brush with the facts of life–time uncommitted is approximately equal to but opposite in result to time committed elsewhere (as evidenced by my reluctant donation of time to the study of statistics), comes other realities: Sometimes when you think you’re spending quality time in the effort of a production, you may be fooled by enthusiasm into believing the finished product is as well a quality item.
Looking back on a project created recently in which I learned, played, and thoroughly enjoyed what I was doing, I find now that in truth, it sucks big time. The experience was a learning process, but much of what was learned was not being applied because of the parallel learning space. Much previous knowledge was also never recalled into action because of the delight in the new.
But it is the process, after all, that is of the utmost importance in the doing. What seems hokey as hell, unpolished, primitive, was in fact sophisticated to what I personally may have produced prior. Learning beyond, without the scattergun effect of learn as you go, would better meld the quality of all the elements together to make a more expressive and streamlined whole.
So maybe stats is not the only space that requires a more focused and dedicated organization of the knowledge, but need be applied more carefully to new media efforts as well. Although it is true, I know, that it is far easier to run wildly ahead in this area than through the numbers field.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology