Stardust@home Suggestion Thread

Discuss your experiences with and ideas about Stardust@home here.

Moderators: Stardust@home Team, DustMods

sensible
Posts: 2
Joined: Tue Aug 01, 2006 4:05 pm
Location: Sofia, Bulgaria

Post by sensible »

I agree that we should have a feedback on the mistakes and it should be not only on an individual basis, but on overall also. In addition, it seems to me that analysis both of the mistakes (most common types of mistakes, erroneous patterns, etc.) and of actual work done (total number of actual particles, total number of potential candidates, average ratio of the potential candidates, average time spent on viewing a movie, and why not revising the tutorial into a guidance on the basis of the actual work). I am almost certain that this information is available to the organisers and I'm sure that that providing such analysis will only improve the quality of work.
WindBreaker
Posts: 9
Joined: Thu Aug 03, 2006 7:28 pm
Location: fredericia, Denmark
Contact:

Post by WindBreaker »

Once our positive movies gets analysed we'll be notified on our 'My Events' page. I don't know how long the movies will be on the list if they're proved negative.
/casper
ramrom
Posts: 6
Joined: Thu Aug 03, 2006 10:46 pm
Location: U.S.A. Kentucky

Post by ramrom »

Yeah, I usually use the back button but sometimes I am still not sure where the error was. I think the Star Dust folks should show the movie in question with a pointer to where the speck is located or wheather it had no speck at all. One never knows always what was wrong with the movie in question. :?:
Gael
Posts: 7
Joined: Fri Aug 04, 2006 8:30 am
Location: Fairfax VA

Learning from mistakes

Post by Gael »

I hit the back key to review movies I made mistakes on. But I agree - sometimes I just cannot spot what I did wrong.

Maybe the same bad movies are re-used again and again for calibration, and if we were corrected and learned which movies were bad, it would defeat the purpose of calibration, that is, we would just be on the lookout for known bad movies.
TWRackers
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Aug 04, 2006 11:37 am
Location: Lynn Haven, Florida, USA

double-checking calibration movies marked as incorrect?

Post by TWRackers »

Is there some way we can check again calibration movies that we're told we marked incorrectly? I have had 1 false positive (thought I saw a track where there was none), but 7 false negatives (missed a track). I'm convinced that in at least a few of those there was no track to be found. How can we guard against calibration movies that were calibrated incorrectly?
Thomas W. Rackers, Ph.D.
president, Astronomical Society of Bay County,
Panama City, Florida, USA
member, SouthEast Alabama Rocketry Society,
NAR Section 572
stefal
Posts: 9
Joined: Thu Aug 03, 2006 5:32 am
Location: UK
Contact:

Post by stefal »

Great idea, I've come across a number of movies where I'd like to add a comment for one reason or another. Just clicking bad focus or no track isn't enough sometimes, for instance I've come across movies where the frames at a lower focus have been rotated or appear to be from a completely different movie.

cheers

Steve
Is there anybody out there? I hope so :)
icebike

Re: suggestion: annotations

Post by icebike »

edobrzel wrote:I know we want to keep things simple, but I'll offer the suggestion of allowing movies to be annotated.

I'm sure there are more. Sure, it is more info for our poor, overburdened staff, but I still think it might be helpful.

Not practical. They are expecting to have over a million movies, each reviewied many many times. Nobody has time to read text.

The best they can do is set a flag (bad focus), or at most a few flags (a few more than they have now). These can be analized by machine. Machines can't make heads or tails of text. Especially with MY SPELLING!

Bad Focus is area that they can't recover any data from. It could be they will get enough particles without these areas, and they may never go back and re-photograph them. I have a hunch that the photographing was a pretty costly and labor intensive process.

On the other hand, it 6 out of 10 people mark the same bunch of movies as Bad Focus, they have a ready and waiting list of areas to re-photograph.
icebike

Post by icebike »

stefal wrote:Great idea, I've come across a number of movies where I'd like to add a comment for one reason or another. Just clicking bad focus or no track isn't enough sometimes, for instance I've come across movies where the frames at a lower focus have been rotated or appear to be from a completely different movie.

cheers

Steve
Steve: Just click bad focus and move on.

Look, the people who put this together ARE rocket scientists. (or ar studying to become one).

We are not here to do their work, or tell them what's wrong. We are like the shovel guys at an archeology dig. First year Arch students and volunteers.

We do this just to seperate wheat from chaff so their valuable time is not exhausted by finding the dust, and can be more profitably spent working on the dust and determining its origin and composition.

These are smart guys and gals. You don't have to put a post-it note on the fridge for them to tell them where their lunch money is.

All you have to do is tell them that there is something wrong with a movie.

When they get around to going back over the bad-focus movies it will be JUST AS OBVIOUS to them as it is to you.

Ultimately, you and I are paying these guys saleries thru tax dollars. I'm HAPPY to help out with this "shovel work" so they can get their work done on time and on budget. I'm saving my own tax dollars, and so are you.

But I don't want YOU writing notes to these people that will cost them more time to read, and further deflect them from their task. That just wastes YOUR valuable time. Your time, and mine, can be better spent in the trenches with a shovel.

It will obvious to them. Just mark it bad and move on.

But I admire your enthusiasm... (did i spell that right?)
BenTrem
Posts: 29
Joined: Wed Aug 02, 2006 3:43 pm
Location: Edmonton, AB Canada
Contact:

Re: suggestion: annotations

Post by BenTrem »

icebike wrote:Not practical. They are expecting to have over a million movies, each reviewied many many times. Nobody has time to read text.
I'm sure that "nobody" is not actually the case. But it would be an extra burden, over and above programming such a thing.

From what I'm seeing the substantial need hasn't been demonstrated. Of the 500+ I've viewed I think there might have been 1 or 2 I'd have commented on if there had been such a facility.

So I guess the question is, if folk could have annotated, what would they have written?
When you look to see how the system works
Likely you will find that it does not.
stefal
Posts: 9
Joined: Thu Aug 03, 2006 5:32 am
Location: UK
Contact:

Post by stefal »

Hi Icebike

No problem, just thought it might be useful to have extra info attached but I can see that it would get out of hand quite quickly :)

I guess for a project that is quite exciting, atleast to us grunts ;) , and perhaps important, there are bound to be suggestions for improvements even if they are impractical.

Half the fun is throwing ideas around and chatting about what we are doing. Perhaps it helps to get the feedback from others, an indication that we are doing the job right, which I think everyone wants to do.

Well take care, nice to meet you :)

ttfn

Steve
Is there anybody out there? I hope so :)
amoroso
Posts: 6
Joined: Thu Aug 03, 2006 12:24 pm
Location: Milano, Italy
Contact:

Using also UT for times in news and status updates

Post by amoroso »

News and updates on the Stardust@Home site provide timestamps in PDT time. Would it be possible to also include Universal Time? This would help non-US users.

Thanks,


Paolo
templar781
Posts: 38
Joined: Thu Aug 03, 2006 9:19 am
Location: St. Petersburg Florida
Contact:

Stardust@home Suggestion Thread

Post by templar781 »

If you have any suggestions on how this site can be improved post it here. I'll start off with two suggestions.

1. Start a suggestion/improvement forum.

2. Implement scroll wheel support for the focus bar. I would like to be able to place the cursor in the focus bar, have the bar indicate the focus position, and then allow the scroll wheel on the mouse to control the up and down focus.
Winning isn't everything, but wanting to win is. - Vince Lombardi
jamespels
Posts: 3
Joined: Sat Aug 05, 2006 8:09 am
Location: Staffordshire, UK

Suggestion: 'Remove' in My Events

Post by jamespels »

I quite often get javascript errors about not being able to load an image. This may be peculiar to Firefox but it's only occasional so it's not really an issue. However, I've got a bit 'trigger happy' on the 'OK' button and accidentally clicked on the image; I know there are no traces on the image so I'd like to be able to go into My Events and remove the erroneous tag...

J.
WeBeGood
Posts: 65
Joined: Thu Aug 03, 2006 7:26 am
Location: Texas, USA

Post by WeBeGood »

4. Instead of a bad focus button, have several to the right of the focus scroll. Each showing a suggested range of focus that would be better. Then, the microscope could go back to that area and shoot a new movie with the new focus range.
Courtesy E-Mail Welcome @ WeBeGood@GMail.Com
cosmicrocker
Posts: 11
Joined: Sat Aug 05, 2006 8:10 am

Stardust@home Suggestion Thread

Post by cosmicrocker »

A suggestion thread is an excellent idea. My first suggestion would be to make this topic sticky.

My second suggestion is to ask for a gallery of positively identified tracks. After reading many postings in the forum, it seems obvious that there is still much confusion among users. I know that there are the 9 "examples" available for viewing, but I think a larger gallery exhibiting a wider range of track characteristics would help clear up much of the confusion.
...Tom

visit #space on IRC.freenode.net
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