Blog #3 - This week in class, we learned about how different groups (specifically the ones we belong to) and how our roles within those groups, shape how we view the world. We looked at one document, in particular, an excerpt from the book Gang Leader for a Day, by Sudhir Venkatesh. In the first chapter of the book, Venkatesh describes his upbringing and how because of having never been exposed to an environment like the projects of Chicago, it was difficult for him to understand essentially "how the other half lived". After graduating from the University of Chicago, he decided to study the inhabitants of the then Robert Taylor Homes in Chicago. He believed that he was trying to put truth to some of his beliefs about an outgroup (people living in the projects) as a member of an ingroup (privileged Americans) when in truth, he was trying to become part of the in-group. I can relate to Venkatesh's desire to understand a society that is outside of what he knows. It reminds me on a much smaller scale, of how at one point in my life I did not understand football or why the fans were so in love with it. I could only make generalizations that often lead me to believe that all football fans were hyper-aggressive and savages. It wasn't until I decided to actually watch a game for myself, that I began to understand the incredible athleticism required to play the sport and the incredible team spirit that each player on that field demonstrated, and it was only a matter of games before I found myself screaming at the TV and becoming a "hyper-aggressive savage". I was so in love with the sport, that I decided to sign up for the school football team myself. In class, we also looked at different research methods for studying sociology. Sociology is best studied through observational studies - researchers observing groups of interest in their natural habitat. This type of study is usually associated with qualitative data - data without numbers. This is a good way of establishing association, but it is hard to draw conclusive information from a study like this because it lacks numbers and statistics. If researchers were to take quantitative observations, then they might be able to say that a certain event is not due to chance and is a causal relationship.