The Capstone Project is the main task of the course. The work is done in the groups formed in Quarter 1. There are four components to project, listed below.

As projects vary, you may choose the primary output of your project to either be (1) a scientific report or (2) a visual presentation or functional product. While every group must produce both of these for their project, you may choose which has more weight when graded (see the syllabus).

Checkpoints

Each of the components below have an associated checkpoint that contain more information about what is expected for each submission. Each checkpoints will have an associated mandatory meeting with a methodology instructor/TA.

Report

The report for your project introduces/contextualizes the problem, describes the methods used, states the results, and draws conclusions about the results. This summary of your work follows best practices in scientific writing, as laid out in quarter 1. Please speak with your domain mentor about expectations on this assignment.

The report is graded by the domain mentor.

Visual Presentation

The visual presentation may be a website, blog, artwork, functional product, or service. There must be some consumer-facing (or general-audience) component to this work. If your visual presentation is not a blog hosted on a static website, it should be approved by your domain mentor and the methodology instructor.

While you may be creative in creating this component, the default approach is to:

  1. Host a static project-blog on GitHub Pages (explained in lecture)
  2. Re-use material from your report, reducing the amount of material and making stylistic changes to make it more appropriate to a casual reader / general audience.

The visual presentation is graded by the methodology instructor.

Code Artifact

The code artifact contains all code for building/reproducing the project, following best-practices in Data Science software development. It is maintained in a public GitHub repository.

The code artifact is graded by the methodology instructor.

Presentation

The presentation is a 5-7 minute/person slide-based presentation of the project. This presentation must balance accessibility to a general audience alongside detailed material for the domain expert.

The presentation is graded by both the domain mentors and the methodology instructor.