Q1 Project

The Q1 project is the main output of the first quarter work. The final result consists of a report and code replicating a known result in your domain (chosen by your domain mentor) or a preliminary investigation into a problem in the domain. Doing a careful job on this assignment will:

  • Give you a broad overview of your domain, alongside a nuanced understanding of a small area within your domain. This will familiarize you with the way the field approaches questions and the data that’s used to approach them.
  • Serve as an initial codebase for your own Quarter 2 project.
  • Serve as practice for writing your Quarter 2 (and as a rough draft of your background/literature review).

Quality work on the Q1 project will drastically reduce the work you do on the Quarter 2 project – building off of a thorough result replication will allow your own project to more developed, nuanced, and sophisticated!

Project Proposal

This assignment is worked on in your project group of 2-4.

The project proposal:

  • details the problem you will investigate in Quarter 2,
  • lays out the initial plan for investigation,
  • gives a verbal ‘elevator pitch’ describing the relevance of the proposal.

The proposal will motivated with due diligence and data-driven conclusions, much like a business or grant proposal.

Methodology Assignments

The methodology assignments are weekly assignments that guide you through Data Science project basics that will be useful as you work in your chosen domain. Generally, these assignments have you apply a new tool or concept to your specific domain problem. These assignments roughly parallel lecture topics and fall into the following categories:

  • Software Development for Data Science Projects
  • Best Practices for Compute Environments
  • Effective Scientific Communication

Participation

Each week, at least 24 hours prior to meeting with your domain, submit material for discussion on Canvas. This submission serves the following purposes:

  • It serves as a regular self-evaluation tool and place to gather your thoughts, so that you can address difficulties in a timely manner. The precision reqired of doing this in writing holds your critical assessment of your understanding to a higher bar.
  • It allows your domain mentor to structure discussion ahead of time, if they so choose.

Note: As every domain is different, your mentor may choose to have you answer different questions than the one below. This assignment is merely a default assignment. However, you should always be turning something in.