Overview

Rather than an exam, the cumulative evaluation in DATS 1001 is a course project. The purpose of the project is to demonstrate what you have learned across the semester: cleaning, exploring, analyzing, modeling, and communicating with data in R.

This project is guided and should reflect your interests. Each group will choose a dataset, identify a few questions, and carry out a sequence of steps that reflect our course structure. You do not need an original research idea. Instead, your job is to show that you can apply the tools we covered in class to a dataset of interest.

Project Topic

You have considerable freedom to set the topic of your project. Keep in mind, you need to be able to find an adequete amount of data in order to be able to answer some data science related questions. Here you can find some links to datasets.

Groups

You will work in a group of 3–4 people.

The first small project assignment (3 point) will ask you to declare your group, propose a topic, and choose a dataset.
Everyone will receive credit for this initial submission even if the topic isn’t finalized–it simply helps me organize groups.

After the initial submission, I will do my best to form groups based on your stated preferences.
You may revise your topic later, but group assignments will remain fixed.

Deliverables

Data proposal (20 points)

For the next step of the project you will work with your group to find data, clean, and answer some questions about the data you’ve collected. Data you collect must be sourced so keep information on where you got it from. Find the instruction here.

Final Project Poster (20 points)

Once you’ve found your data, you will complete the research based on the following tasks. There will be a workshop the last two days of class in the semester. It will include group poster presentations. Students are able to print posters for free. Your group will prepare one poster to present (due Sunday, November 30). Find the instruction here.

3-minute Poster Presentation (30 points)

On one of the final days of class, we’ll hold a poster session–similar to a mini-conference. Your group will display your poster and discuss it with visitors who stop by. Each member should be prepared to give a 3-minute overview of your part of the project and answer questions from classmates, instructors, or guests.

You’ll also attend the two-day poster session to explore other groups’ projects. On the day you aren’t presenting, you’ll be assigned a few classmates’ posters to focus on and will answer several short questions about their presentations.

Group Final Report (30 points)

As a group, you will write a short report expanding on your poster and providing more detail about your individual contributions. This written report complements your poster by allowing you to discuss your methods, findings, and reflections in greater depth (due Thursday, December 18).

Individual Reflection and Teamwork survey (10 points)

Each student will complete a short reflection as well as a survey about what you contributed, what you learned, and how your team worked together (due Friday, December 19).