What do you believe in?

For the past few days, I have started meeting people a little bit.

There is something I want to know.

I am walking around to gather the information I want to know.

I had just finished listening to one person today, but even now, I have been bombarding a friend with questions over the phone, haha. This is actually quite interesting. I am conducting a personal social analysis.

Having said that, it is a bit different from analysis using big data.

Analysis using big data is commonly done by various companies and research institutes.

In a DX society, data speaks volumes. For minor things, if you analyze the mountain of numbers that is that information, you can easily reach the information you want.

How you cut into that treasure of numbers—if you are good at it, you can extract diamonds from it, just like someone skillfully playing mahjong tiles. Surely, a sense for it is also necessary, but for those who are good at this, it means that finding answers in this day and age is a piece of cake.

However, and it is a big however, I sometimes wonder what data actually is.

I think this is partly due to my skeptical personality, but it is something I think precisely because I have tried analyzing numbers.

In college, I asked over 100 people to fill out a questionnaire, and I analyzed the information that came back very carefully.

It was an analysis using software that was incredibly difficult to handle. I repeatedly investigated whether there was a causal relationship or a correlation in those connections.

That was when I felt it.

Questionnaire surveys really do have their limits.

After all, before the numbers are even calculated, there is a person who creates the survey materials. Because of that, I think there is no way for answers outside of what is within that person to emerge. Well, since I was the one who created the survey materials, I probably thought so even more.

Even so, I still feel that answers collected by asking questions under fixed rules have certain rules, and there is no way to escape from them.

So, for my graduation thesis, I switched to interview research. I had already experienced interviews many times outside of my thesis. And in the social research I envision, I believe these interviews are by far the most interesting.

Even if the same answer comes back to the same question, if you end it there, it becomes the same as a questionnaire survey. The depth of interview research lies in trying to know more about the person in front of you—why that answer was given.

Thankfully, I am currently doing many collaborative live streams with many people on stand.fm. This is nothing more than a conversation, but if you trace it back, it is a conversation I have already practiced through interviews. I listen carefully to what the other person was thinking when they gave that answer. That is why collaborative live streams are so fascinating.

For that reason, right now, there is something I want to know.

The things I want to know have already been answered by national data. Research institutes and the like have published them as well. However, that is not what I want to know. I want to hear about each person's individual experience, by meeting them in person or talking over the phone, and listening calmly.

How many people will I be able to talk to between now and the end of the year? I imagine that if I get introduced to friends of acquaintances, I might be able to hear from about 20 people.

I am feeling a little excited right now.

Someday, the day will come when I can talk about the data I collected with my own two feet.

Yes, I like to grasp the world roughly through big data analysis, and then go out on my own to verify, 'Is that really true?'

I want to be convinced of everything myself before moving forward. After all, numbers sometimes lie, haha.

Now, I have a new goal again.

Although I have statistical qualifications, I value my own intuition and the real voices I collect with my own two feet much more than the data released by the authorities.

Somehow, it's starting to get fun.

I would like to write about this content on note next spring.

*Thank you for reading until the end.

*Thank you for reading.