GUIDELINES FOR THE FINAL PROJECT

In today’s workplace, you can have an immediate competitive edge over other
employees, and even those with more experience, by applying statistical analysis skills
to real-world decision making. This project will give you an opportunity to see how you
can transform data into information to improve your decision.

You form a group using Brightspace group tool. Groups have three (or four) people. As
soon as you find yourself in a group, designate a group leader.

You will need to submit your project plan. This plan should be written following the
guidelines. Guideline will be presented on Brightspace in a week.

The final project report is due during the end of the semester. You will be notified exact
date through Brightspace site.

The given dates will be the final, inflexible and non-negotiable deadline –
please plan accordingly.

Please note, the guidelines are general and for the sake of consistency, all project teams
are encouraged to follow them. However, it is quite possible that some project contents
and results are better stated in a different format/structure. In such cases, teams should
develop appropriate modifications to the outline below and inform the instructor ASAP.
Finally, if you have any questions or need any clarification, please send me an email
(Fouzia.Baki@uwindsor.ca) or see me during my office hours to discuss.

Guidelines for the final Report

Cover page:
Project title, date & names of all team members.

A comment on the report title: Please make sure that your report has a title reflecting its
content (so do not use title like: “Our Project Report” or “The Suicides”). Titles have to
be brief but descriptive, serving in miniature the same overview function as the
introduction. Three most common conventions for academic report/paper titles are:
• A question: the question that the report addresses (e.g., “Are Big-3 Cars More Fuel
Efficient?”)
• Summary of purpose: e.g., “The Relationship Between Fuel Economy and Car Size
for Big-3 Vehicles”
• Two part title with a colon: presents key words from the issue to the left, and key
words from the thesis to the right (e.g., “Fuel Efficiency and Car Size: Negative
Relationship”

Table of Contents: Optional

Executive Summary: Maximum one paragraph summarizing the key results and
findings of the project work.

I. Introduction [1- 1.5 page(s)]

Here you explain briefly the purpose of your project. What issue did you address? Why
did you address it? You will need to provide enough background to enable the reader to
understand the problem being investigated.
- Domain background and problem statement
- Why is the problem important?
- What specific sub-topics were considered in the project?
- What was proposed as the deliverable(s)
- Structure/outline for the remainder of the report

II. Literature Review [1 page]

The “literature review” section (also sometimes called “state-of-the-art”) summarizes
previous research addressing the same or related problem. The primary source for
material in that section should be university library (collection of books, journals, and
databases). The purpose of this section is to allow you to position your work with
respect to other efforts addressing the issue of interest (this may involve previous and
contemporary scholars with whom you may or may not agree on the subject).

- State of the art in research and/or practice (cite references)

- Any prior work particularly related to your project? If so explain the connections.
- Key developments in the field (your perspective)
If you are pressed for time you may also explore some of the resources available on the
web. Perhaps the most useful are the following:

[A] for looking up scientific references: http://scholar.google.com

For example, typing up “fuel efficient cars comparison” yields about 12,000 hits (vs.
10,400,000 on a regular Google search), “world suicide analysis” – over 84,000
(22,400,000), and “sports statistic analysis” – approx. 11,000 (1,290,000).

[B] for definitions & general background materials.: Wikipedia http://www.wikipedia.org

Please be aware, however, that while locating referential material on the web is easy, it
is as easy to check if the writing you provide in your report is original (do not copy and
paste somebody else’s work, no matter how appealing).

III. Project work [4 pages]

This section contains the bulk of the actual work that was accomplished in the project.
Each team should create sub-sections as appropriate detailing the work carried out (i.e.,
what) and the process adopted (i.e., how).
Provide data description: say what data you have, i.e. number of observations, time
period, sample of countries/cars/widgets as appropriate, give definitions of variables. In
picking your data make sure that you do not rely on already aggregated data (e.g., data
for which you cannot compute any descriptive statistics). The actual raw data should be
provided in the Appendix and/ under drop box on Brightspace site (talk to your TA or
instructor).

This is a “cookbook” section detailing how did you carry out your investigation. It should
provide enough details so that other researchers could replicate your investigation and
arrive at the same results. If for your project you have collected the data through a
survey, please elaborate on the survey design and procedure for collecting survey
samples.

Here you can explain what methods you used to analyze the data, e.g. histograms,
scatter plots, measures of location and dispersion, correlations, hypothesis testing,
regressions. Give formula of key measures and examples of graphs, and how to
interpret them. Also here specify the regression model(s) you estimated.

You do not have to apply every single measure/statistics/test covered in this

course – choose carefully what you think are the most relevant.

IV. Results/Discussion/Recommendations [2 pages]

- Results of the project (key findings; new insights, etc.)
- Discussion of the results (including your own assessment of the value of the results;
their immediate/future applicability)
- How well the project deliverables were met? If not met fully, provide reasons
This is the main part of the report that will be typically read with more care. Here you
can explain the significance of your findings by relating what you discovered to the
problem you set out to investigate in the introduction. Did your investigation accomplish
its initial purpose? Did it answer your question(s)? Did it confirm or reject your
hypothesis? Are your results useful? Why or why not? Did you discover information that
you had not anticipated? Was your research approach appropriate?
Did your investigation raise new questions? Are there implications from your results that
need to be explored? The key to success in this section is to link your findings to the
questions and problems raised in the introduction.

V. Conclusions [1-2 pages]

- Restate the project problem and a brief summary of the results
- Recommendations on future work on this topic based on the results
In this last section you focus on the main things you have learned from the investigation
and, if appropriate, in the practical applications of your investigation. If your
investigation was aimed at making a practical decision (for example, predict game score
among two teams), here you can recommend appropriate actions. What you say in this
section depends on the context of your investigation.
Acknowledgements (as appropriate)
Acknowledge any person/group/institution that provided specific information, data or 3
other assistance that was critical to the completion of the project. If you received the
data from a specific source, from which you had to receive permission, please do
mention it.

References
Include at least 4-6, including books, journal papers, websites that are relevant to your
work. Use the following format in listing references (in alphabetical order)
[1] Author(s), Publication/Book title, Journal/Publisher, Year (and page numbers if
it is a technical paper)
[2] Website XYZ <http://address.com> viewed on a particular date DD-MM-YY
Appendices
This is a section where you can list your raw data (e.g., in tables), provide a copy of
your survey, etc. Pages in this section do not count towards the total number of pages
and may include, for example, listing of your data and additional plots that you could not
fit in the main body of the report. If the data set is too long, I would recommend you
talk to the instructor for alternate submission of data set (instead of printing them).

REPORT APPEARANCE AND SUBMISSION

Project reports have to be submitted electronically through Brightspace.

The final report submitted for grading has to have professional appearance, including the
following:
• Has to be typeset in word processing program
• All figures are drawn using Excel or Minitab or any other statistical software

Notes:
1. Ideally the report should be about 10-12 pages long including cover page, references,
acknowledgements, etc., but certainly should not exceed 15 pages.
2. All pages (including the References) should be numbered. Do not number the cover
page.
3. Use font size 12 pt (font Times or New Times Roman are preferred); 1-inch
margins all around and 1.5 line spacing.
4. Final report is due on (TBD). No excuses for missing the deadline are accepted.

Tips for a good report:

• Use numbered headings and sub-headings with titles that mean something and
help the reader follow what you are doing
• Number all tables (e.g., Table 1) and graphs (e.g., Figure 5), give them
reasonable captions (e.g., Fig. 5 Linear Regression Fit to the Data) and refer to
them in the text, with a discussion of each table and graph.
• Read through your work at least once. Do you think it is easy to read? Would
another student be able to follow and understand what you are doing?
• Use the spell-checker on your computer, and check that the corrections that Word
has made are the right ones– three is nothin wurse than tiring to reed soemthing
with speeding mistakes!!

PROJECT PRESENTATION PREPARATION GUIDELINES

All teams are required to prepare the summary presentations (in PowerPoint format).
All teams are required to prepare the summary presentations of their projects and
provide the files in PowerPoint format via website. All teams should follow the guidelines
below in preparing the presentation materials.

I recommend at most 5 slides.

A 5-slide presentation could be structured as follows
Slide 1: Title page
Slide 2: Problem introduction, importance & deliverables
Slide 3: Project work: data source & character
Slide 4: Project work: approach and methods used
Slide 5: Results & conclusions