Final Project

ST 597 | Spring 2017 | University of Alabama

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The final project is an important part of the course. First, it allows you to put into practice what you have been learning and demonstrate your mastery of the course material. But it also is a chance to gain some experience that can be used in future interviews or research endeavors.

You must come up with your own project idea. Ideally your project can be related to your current research, job, or interests. Your final report can be geared to the audience of your choice. There are two types of projects:

1. Data Analysis: use data to address, or if possible solve, an interesting problem using (mostly) R

2. Methodology: develop a new R method or set of functions to help with data analysis (e.g., develop an RStudio addin for reading in fixed width files, create a shiny app).

Based on your project proposals, I may be able to modify the course content to include topics you have the most interest in.

Form Teams

• 3 people on a team
• I may assign people to your group or modify groups if necessary
  • Let me know of your interests and I can try to find other people in class that will want to work with you
• If you have an ongoing research project, this would be a great topic.
• If you want to get a job in a certain industry (e.g., sports), do a project that will help you land a job.
• You will give me a review of each member’s performance

Project Proposal

• Due: Thurs April 6th midnight
• 1 page max (email me):
  1. Project Name
  2. Names of all team members
  3. What problem are you trying to solve?
  4. Where will you get the data?
  5. What approaches will you try to address the problem?
  6. What do you expect to find?
  7. Who is the intended audience?
• I will provide feedback if necessary.

Premliminary Results

• Due: Wed April 19th midnight
• Expand the project proposal with your results to date
• This does not need to be a polished report, it is intended to give me a sense of your progress and allow me to offer advice.
  • You should include graphics, exploratory data analysis, etc.

Presentation (15%)

• In class presentations week of April 24th.
• You will have 9 mins to make your presentation and 2 mins for questions.
• Tell an interesting story with your data

Final Manuscript and Code (15%)

• Due: Wednesday May 3th at midnight
• Max of 6 pages. References or appendices don't count toward page limit (but these may not be read).
• Formatting: Look up a journal/magazine that you like and follow its formatting guidelines. But do keep your intended audience in mind.
  • I will consider a blog or website format (e.g. http://www.r-bloggers.com/) instead of a report (but discuss with me)
• Depending on your target audience, you do not need to show your R code in the final paper. The purpose of the Data Analysis report is to convey your analysis and results.
• But you will need to turn in your R code as a separate file(s).
• I would encourage you to make your work and report reproducible (e.g., RMarkdown), but this is not a requirement.
• You will turn in an assessment of each team member and their contribution to the group. Assessment form here