Project Guidelines

Your Task

Each student has been allocated into a project group of three. Each group has been assigned a specific project research topic. Your goal is to complete the required project deliverables and checkpoints, in accordance with the guidelines detailed in the remainder of this document.

Deliverables

This project has the following three key deliverables:

1. Report

[template] (right click and choose “Save Link As…” to download)

DUE THURSDAY JULY 25, 6PM

Your report should be written using Quarto and submitted as a rendered .html file. We recommend using an IDMRaD (Introduction, Data, Methods, Results and Discussion) report format, with details provided in the report template.

2. Poster

[template] (Google Slides link)

DUE TUESDAY JULY 23, 6PM (so that we have time to print the posters)

Your poster should be submitted as a .pdf file. We will then make a printed copy for the poster session on the final day (July 26).

3. Presentation

DUE THURSDAY JULY 25, 6PM

Each group will give an 8-minute presentation on the final day (July 26). The presentation should effectively have the same structure as your report with an introduction, followed by data description, an overview of methods, followed by results and discussion. Your slides may be created in any software, but we ony accept submissions in the form of a .pdf file, a Google Slides link, or a Quarto presentation (self-contained .html file or hosted online).

Checkpoints

Checkpoint 1: 5-minute presentation during lab on July 1

Note: It is perfectly fine if you don’t have any results at this point

No notes/scripts are allowed

Your first checkpoint presentation should be structured as follows.

  • Introduction (1 slide): Describe your project topic/question(s) and why it is important

  • Data (1 slide): Data description, any preliminary data pre-processing/cleaning steps

  • EDA (2 slides max): 1–2 EDA plots related to your question(s) of interest

  • Methods (1 slide): Early thoughts on methods/modeling strategy. Justify why it might be appropriate to answer your question(s) of interest

  • Plan of action (1 slide): List all the steps needed to complete your project (be specific). Highlight the completed steps. What are the next steps?

Checkpoint 2: 8-minute presentation during lab on July 16

No notes/scripts are allowed

Your second checkpoint presentation should be structured as follows.

  • Introduction (1 slide): Describe your project topic/question(s) and why it is important

  • Data: (1 slide) Data description and any major data pre-processing/cleaning steps (e.g., whether you consider specific observations, create any meaningful features, etc. - but don’t mention minor steps like column type conversion, filtering out unnecessary rows)

  • Plan of action (1 slide): List all the steps needed to complete your project (be specific). Highlight the completed steps.

  • Present the completed steps (5 slides max): methods, plots, findings, etc.

  • Plan of action (1 slide, use the same one as before): what are the steps still to be completed?

Analysis

Your analysis should focus on both:

Exploratory data analysis: Create visualizations to explore the underlying structure of the data and gain insights about distributions and relationships between variables. These should be ideally based on reasoned hypotheses.

Statistical modeling: Demonstrate the use of statistical and machine learning modeling techniques. This may involve justifications for your choice of model (e.g., comparison with model specifications such as using different predictors, or with other methods), and then any relevant interpretation of the model with regards to your project’s topic. Depending on your project, the model(s) you rely on may be used for either an inference (i.e., interpreting coefficients) or prediction task. The model you choose just needs to be motivated by your question of interest.