Instructions for assignment 3

The goal of this assignment is to obtain a copy of your credit report, examine the information in the report for errors. This assignment requires you to navigate through the websites, and the steps are detailed below. Be ready to print the web pages you accessed. So be sure you are connected to a printer.


STEP 1

To obtain a free copy of your credit report, go to https://www.annualcreditreport.com

NOTE 1: It is important that you use the above link to get to the correct site.
You will be providing sensitive information (e.g. your Social Security Number and date of birth) in the process of getting a credit report.

There are many other sites that take advantage of this fact, and tries to pass off as the above site. A few of such impostor sites are motivated by CRIMINAL intentions. So, be careful.

NOTE 2: Where and when you can, you should access the site with your own personal computer (as opposed to a public computer) using a wired connection or an encrypted wireless connection.


On the first page, select the appropriate state. If you grew up in California, then select California. If you did not, then choose the state in which you most often use credit.

Example 1: If you lived most of your life in Seattle, Washington, but you have applied for most of your credit cards in California using a California address, you should select California as the state.

Example 2: If your parents live in Seattle, Washington, and they allowed you to use their credit card, then you should select Washington as the state.


After you have selected the state, click the button “Request Report”.



STEP 2

The next page should read “PLEASE PROVIDE ALL OF THE PERSONAL INFORMATION REQUIRED BELOW”.

Enter your personal information.

NOTE: Check the box to indicate that you want no more than the last four digits of your Social Security Number to appear when you view or print your credit report.



STEP 3

This page asks you to select one or more of the consumer credit reporting agencies.

For this assignment, choose Experian only.

Click Next to continue.



STEP 4

This page says “Click NEXT to continue. You will be transferred to the Experian site.”
It tells you how to return to the AnnualCreditReport.com site.

Click NEXT to go to the Experian site.



STEP 5

This page asks you for the last four digits of your SSN. Enter the digits and click Submit
The next page asks if you want to buy a credit monitoring service. There is no need to do so. Scroll down and click the grey button “Annual Credit Report”.
The next page is an order summary. Click on the link “Terms & Conditions”. Read it. Then check the box, and click the red button “Submit”.


STEP 6

You may be asked to answer certain questions about your credit history. So, give the right answers and click Submit.

STEP 7

At this point, you are getting your credit report. This page will show a summary of your report. Print out this page.

Next, look at the right side of the page, and click on the link “Print your report”. This will open a new page with your full printable report. Print out this full report.

Congratulations! You have obtained your credit report from one of the credit reporting agencies.



STEP 8

Study your report. Become familiar with it.

Pay attention to errors in the information.
In particular, if the report states that you have potentially negative credit information, make sure that the information is indeed correct.



STEP 9

For the assignment, write a brief report answering these questions:

1. Are there any errors in your report?
If there are, what type of errors are they? (e.g., wrong spelling of your name, wrong address, credit cards you do not own, etc.)

2. From studying your credit report, what did you learn that was surprising?
Write a paragraph or two or more describing what you learnt.


Be ready to talk about these and other issues in the laboratory session.

forgot?

is there no discussion today?

Group think and transactive memory

Groupthink is the idea that when people come together to collaborate, more people can only mean more chaos. In the context of gaming, if people are working together as a team playing a video game, the more people there are per team, the more difficult it is to work together efficiently. It's necessary as a team to collaborate on strategies and work together in order to win. With war games, working as a group is difficult because of the need for communication, and very often the game would be easier and more effective if the individual played alone on his side. Groupthink forces communication which can be cumbersome in the real time world of gaming.

Transactive memory on the other hand, is the idea that collaborating as a group is more beneficial than working alone because each person can offer information to the group. A person alone is limited to what he knows, but in a group, each member can contribute to the group to make up for an individual's lack of knowledge. This is particularly important in strategy type gaming. An individual can miss certain strategies, but when there are other group members involved, many more choices come up. Transactive memory uses the group as a strength, relying on each member's contribution of their knowledge.

Groupthink, transactive memory and gaming

Groupthink refers to the idea that group communication falls apart under pressure. This leads to irrational decision-making and impaired judgment. This concept especially occurs when people are alike, this is a problem since a decision will quickly be accepted by everyone and not thought through or an alternatives considered. In a groupthink-gaming situation, the group comes to a consensus on their gaming tactic, answers, and solutions. Unfortunately, in these settings, pressure is often the reason for rash and often times irrational decisions. However, the groupthink approach uses collaboration to come a decision in order to avoid an argumentation outbreak. For example when playing a group game, certain time guidelines are included in the rules. Answers need to be presented before this the time limit is reached and groupthink approaches coming to an answer by collaborating to come up with a resolution. Often times, however, analysis tactics, and testing is overlooked due to the possibility of conflict arising.

Transactive memory is when members of a group have different expertise and knowledge that they offer to the group when coming to a decision. This idea acknowledges group members as select individuals that can serve as external memory to help their team come to a resolution. Because every individual brings different information to the table, the group benefits from every member expertise. Of course, the group communication improves when every person is aware of one another's specialty. Consequently, in a gaming situation, with a little bit of knowledge collected from every individual, the group is able to piece together a solid answer, resolution, or solution to a problem to ensure a solid win. Because every member of the group recognizes that each member knows something that another doesn't, the group is open to strategies, suggestions, and sharing important information with other teammates during a gaming situation.

Group Think and Transactive Memory

Group think, in relation to surveillance, can be understood through a series of tests that were done involving a classroom. An experiment was set up to test the effect of group think. One hundred students in a geometry class were given a simple multiple choice problem to solve (i.e. evaluating the length of lines, determining which among a given set was longest).  Everyone in the class room was in on the experiment and told which line to choose, even though it was obviously not the longest line. Two students in the group were "ginny pigs" and were not told which line to choose. When asked as a whole group which line was the longest, 98 students raised their hands to answer incorrectly and as a result the 2 "ginny pigs" answered incorrectly due to group think. It was obvious the line chosen was not the longest, but this experiment shows the power of group think. It also shows the detrimental effect it can have on decision making when the answer is wrong and vice versa for a correct answer. 

Transactive memory involves group processing whereby people in the group are better able to recall information due the contributions of others. Individuals in a group are able to recall individual memory storage from a collective group of information. Much like open source software and computer gaming, everyone who can access the program can contribute to the betterment of the game or program. This may be seen as a downfall to some, as the information or final analysis is not based on one individuals observations but by the observations of many. Transactive memory serves many and is a community oriented process, and is a successful process, as the exercise in discussion last week proved, in gathering a pool of knowledge.  

Groupthink and transactive memory

Groupthink is a group dynamic that can develop in which consensus is encouraged and any sort of conflict is avoided. An obvious problem with groupthink is that decision making can have more to do with powerful personalities than convincing argument or well thought decision-making. People tend to take the path of least-resistance, and so an idea that might seem illogical or even dangerous to someone outside the group could appear perfectly rational in the context of the group's stifled discussion. When I was thinking about surveillance and groupthink, I was reminded of the book 1984. The groupthink that was so prevalent in that society was tied directly to the heavy surveillance that permeated society. This is a danger in our own society, as well, though hopefully not the extent of 1984. The government has admittedly been engaged in more surveillance in the last 7 years, and the concern with that is that it will discourage open discussion about things that might not be deemed "appropriate" in mainstream society.

Transactive memory refers to the types of grouping of memory that members of a group engage in. Different people in a group possess different areas of specialized knowledge, and people within groups can help other members remember facts by triggering memories with their own knowledge. This sort of system can be efficient, because it allows for a greater depth of knowledge in a group. More knowledge can be packed into a group. On the other hand, if transactive memory is going to be relied on, there needs to be familiarity with other members of the group, because otherwise, there could be huge and important holes in knowledge.

Groupthink and transactive memory
groupthink allows consensus to be reached through the path of least resistance: individuals only argue over issues where there is disagreement. people may give in to pressures from the rest of the group when there is conflict, which explains how it is possible for a group that possesses the right answer from one person, to get the wrong answer overall. Groupthink can't be greater than the sum of its parts: the group may get more answers correct than any one individual, but there are things that nobody in a group knows, so those issues won't ever get resolved. the web 2.0 solution is to get everyone involved: the more people who contribute, the more knowledge. in terms of fact-based or objective standards, this gets outcomes that are better and have more information. however, subjective things like 'which of these photos is best?' usually don't work well with groupthink. Flickr has a feature called 'explore' which selects the most interesting photos based on algorithms that point to which photos receive the most attention from the most users. what this tends to do is select photos that oftentimes have limited artistic merit but appeal to wide audiences: photos of kittens or scantily clad women. more serious photographers on flickr dislike 'explore' because it doesn't reward artistic merit, but rather mass appeal.

Transactive memory is a way by which an individual is able to remember things in a group setting that they could not have on their own. it's like when something jogs your memory: someone says a fact that you wouldn't remember off the top of your head, but it causes associations in your brain to kick in and cause you to remember things. it can also happen when someone says a statement like "all Xs are Ys". you might not have ordinarily remembered it as being true, but when mentioned, you might remember learning that all Xs are Ys.