Final Project Guidelines

DATA 301

Overview

Your final project is your chance to demonstrate your knowledge from DATA 301 in a real-world setting. You will choose a dataset, or possibly multiple related datasets, and perform an analysis to address your group’s research question(s).

You will summarize your findings into a poster, and present it during the common hour final poster session (with both sections of DATA 301) on Saturday, March 15th from 1:10pm to 2:30pm. The poster session will be in our regularly scheduled classroom!

Projects may be done in groups of up to 3 students. The guidelines are the same regardless; that is, if you choose to work alone, I will expect the same level of quality as if you choose to work in a group of 3.

Caution

No extensions will be granted for projects, except in highly unusual, extenuating circumstances. Please start early!

Checkpoint 1: Project Proposal

To make sure you are on track, you have a two-page project proposal due on Sunday, February 23.

This proposal must be two pages only, and it must contain:

1. Your group member names.

2. Information about the dataset(s) you intend to analyze:

   • Where are the data located?
   • Who collected the data and why?
   • What information (variables) are in the dataset?

3. Research Questions: You should have one primary research question and a few secondary questions

4. Preliminary exploration of your dataset(s): A few simple plots or summary statistics that relate to the variables you plan to study.

Finding Data

Some good places to find datasets are:

• Kaggle

• Tidy Tuesday

• Google Data Set Search

• Reddit Datasets

• List of JSON APIs

• Project Gutenberg (good source of textual data)

• State or federal government websites, such as the U.S. Government’s Open Data

Printing Your Final Poster

This website has some poster templates that you can (but are not required to) use. Your poster will need to be printed on 24” x 36” paper. You may select all the most basic printing options (e.g., matte paper, no lamination, not mounted). I would recommend printing you poster at Cal Poly since basic posters cost about $18. You might need to check on their turnaround time, since they may be busy during Week 10.

If you need assistance with the cost of printing a poster, please let Dr. Theobold know.

Final Poster Grading

Your posters will be graded on:

• Presentation:

  • Was the poster clear and visually appealing?
  • Do the visualizations tell a story?
  • Were the presenters able to describe the project and answer questions?

• Correctness:

  • Were the correct summaries and analyses chosen for the data?
  • Were the results correctly interpreted and described?
  • Was the choice of analysis reasonable for the research question?

• Complexity:

  • Did the project address multiple rich aspects of the dataset(s)?
  • Did the project use skills from across the quarter to answer questions?
  • Did the project incorporate something from Week 9 or 10? (Webscraping, APIs, data joining) or from beyond the course?

• Data insight:

  • Were the research questions interesting and insightful?
  • Did the project make clear and relevant data conclusions?
  • Does the project tell a story with real-world impact?