Question: what has been the hardest pattern to find in a set of data, what was the set of data about?

Sreejita Ghosh answered on 9 Jan 2020:

I work with hormone data from the adrenal glands. Now the adrenal gland hormones take part in 3 broad functions of the body: Glucocorticoids are responsible for the immune system, development of the brain and cognition, metabolism, and body-fluid homeostatis; Mineralocorticoids maintain the salt-water balance in our body; and sex corticoids are responsible for the sex development.
The data I get is a mass-spectroscopy analysis done by my doctor collaborator, on the urine of babies, children, and adolescents. The mass spec tells us the amount of each type of adrenal hormones found in the urine of each subject.
When there is overflow or under-flow of hormones then that is manifested as a disorder. Since different people secrete different amounts of hormone we look at the relative measure of a hormone to the other extracted hormones. Depending on the over or under production of hormones we find out which part of adrenal gland has a ‘malfunction’. However there are a few hormones which are secreted from more than 1 pathways of the adrenal gland, and it becomes tricky for us to find out in which part of the adrenal gland the problem lies.