Final Project Instructions
The final project is meant to be a time-intensive, significant, team-based effort that demonstrates your knowledge of advanced regression analysis techniques. Note that the final project takes the place of nearly 6 homeworks and a final exam. So, if you typically spend 3-4 hours per homework and would have spent 20-30 hours studying for the final examination then the total equivalent effort that you will be expected to expend on the final project will be, per person, something like 40-50 hours. In teams of up to 4, this means between that each project will be expected to benefit from between 160 and 200 man hours of labour, enough to get a significant amount of work done. This means that you will fail to complete a satisfactory final project if you wait until the last minute to begin and complete the project.
The final schedule is as follows:
Week 14 Final project groups are to be formed by this date. A project team may consist of 4 people maximum. Groups consisting of 2-3 people are preferred. Single member groups are strongly discouraged. Each group should submit a piece of paper with a group name and the names and CUID’s of all group members by the end of the last class of the week.
Week 15 Final project proposals are due on this date. The proposal will be graded and will count as 25% of the final project grade. The proposal should consist of a 1 page, single space, full column-width, 10pt font paper describing the general outline of the intended final project. In particular, it should take the form of a research abstract short paper – title, authors, abstract, introduction, data, methods, conclusions, and references. Note that the only significant missing piece is the results. Other sections will grow in the final project report as well, but each should appear in the project proposal in reasonably complete form. Of particular interest are a description of the data to be used, a detailed description of how it was collected, a literature search of analyses already performed on the data and the conclusions drawn from those analyses, and an overview of the techniques you intend to use in analysing the data. Project proposals that do not outline a project with sufficiently high complexity will be given zero credit and groups that author such proposals will be required to resubmit project proposals on a weekly basis thereafter until the proposal reaches a sufficient level of complexity to warrant a passing grade.
Final Exam Period – Final project presentations. The presentation will be graded and will count as 25% of the final project grade. Each group will present their results in a short in-class presentation (single presenters are preferred). The day on which your group will give their presentation will be decided in class on Dec. 3rd by a random selection process. The duration of each presentation will depend on the total number of groups formed, but should not exceed 10 minutes. Slides for the presentations (plan on 1-2 per minute of presentation) must be delivered to the instructor 15 minutes before the start of class. The presentation should explain the domain of the regression analysis, highlight the methods used, and cover analysis results. Each group will be subject to 5-10 minutes of questioning from both the instruction and the other students in the class about all aspects of their project. Having backup slides (slides prepared, but not used in the presentation) for questions about methodology detail will be expected of all groups.