Nap Log

A two-week record of your own naps and alertness, and — the graded half — an analysis of what your data actually shows

Due: 2 April 2027 · Weight: 30%

Fourteen days of your own sleep and alertness, and an analysis of it. The recording starts after the week 2 Nap Lab and the format is the one you settled in week 1.

Read the weighting before you start: the record is worth less than the analysis of it. A meticulous fortnight of entries with three sentences of summary is the most common way this assessment goes wrong, and it is a hard one to recover from because the recording period cannot be repeated.

What to record#

Every day, including days with no nap — absences are data, and a log with the empty days quietly dropped cannot support any claim about frequency.

For each day:

• Both measures from week 1: a Karolinska reading and a reaction-time median, taken the same way each time.
• If you napped: lights-down time, duration, and both measures taken within two minutes of waking and again at fifteen.
• Context worth one line: caffeine and when, previous night’s sleep, and anything unusual. You are not writing a diary; you are recording the variables you might later need to explain a strange number.
• Your uncertainty. “Unsure whether I slept” is a real and frequent observation. Record it rather than resolving it — week 10 is about how badly the available instruments resolve exactly this, and your own uncertainty is part of that argument.

The lab entries from weeks 2, 3 and 4 belong in here too. That is three of your fourteen days already structured, including the 20-minute nap and the coffee-nap comparison.

The analysis#

Around 800 words. Not a summary of the log — an argument from it.

A strong analysis does four things:

1. States a finding. Something specific enough to be wrong. “My trough is about ninety minutes earlier than the lecture’s typical case” is a finding; “I learned a lot about my sleep” is not.
2. Supports it from your own numbers. Point at the entries. If the claim rests on four days out of fourteen, say so.
3. Says what the data cannot show. You have one participant, no control condition, and full knowledge of what the course predicts. Name the specific way that could have produced your result, not the generic caveat.
4. Reports what went against you. The week 4 prediction you sealed in week 1 is the obvious candidate. If it was wrong, say so and say by how much.

How it is marked#

Analysis carries the most weight, and honesty about limitations carries real weight of its own — that is deliberate. A clean, modest finding with its weaknesses named scores above a confident one that ignores them.

The commonest ways to lose marks here, in order: no analysis to speak of; a finding the log does not actually support; dropping the days that did not fit; and describing the limitations in the abstract rather than saying which of them applies to your fortnight.