Special Effects

This is an X-files entry.

Since I have no idea how and why it happened, I will just give you the facts (as usual), and let you draw your own conclusion.

The following are graphs of empirical data collected using same set of equipment, it's largely an automated process with human involvement required only at the start of each data collection to do some manual handling that doesn't change any of the equipment involved.

First, this is what a normal data looks like:



Good and dandy, data like this is what I need.

However, sometimes things go haywire for no apparent reason, same set of equipment, different day and time, different person who did the manual handling, the data turned out like this:



The human involved manual handling part should really not affect the data, so logic deduces that it must be the equipment that causes this.

But hor, the few data collections after I resumed the responsibility of the manual handling part showed that everything is alright, for example:



Strange, and I haven't a clue why. The superstitious explanation is that perhaps the equipment only works if I handle it myself, and not other people. So when I was unavailable and asked a colleague to help perform the manual handling part, the data went haywire?

I know it's not logical, so I simply dubbed this the N-effect.

As if the N-effect is not bad enough, I had the misfortune to experience something worse, simply by having another colleague tagged along to learn when I did the manual handling part.

Behold! The M-effect:



Basically, no data at all. >_<

After two days continuously getting data like this, I smartened up and did the manual handling part alone with nobody around to induce any "special effect".

And yes, my data turned out fine after that.

*X-files music* The truth is out there...