Project Proposal due: Friday, Nov 17

Progress Report due: Friday, Dec 01

Final Project Report due: Wednesday, Dec 13
Final Project Presentation: Thursday, Dec 15

Final Project Guidelines (MATH105)

The final project is an opportunity to explore your interests and learn something by
using/applying various statistical methods or data analysis skills that you have learned in
class.

The goal is to say something (draw some conclusion or inferences) interesting about
practical issues involved in data. You may pose some questions or concerns, and try to get
reasonable answers (based on data).

Required data analysis technique:

❑ Handling data and visualization
❑ Parameter estimation: Confident interval
❑ Density fitting: Visualization, Hypothesis testing
❑ One sample hypothesis testing: mean and/or proportion, variance
❑ Two samples hypothesis testing: comparing mean and/or proportion, variance
❑ Non-parametric hypothesis testing
Elective technique:
❑ Multiple populations: ANOVA compare means under influence of factors
(one-way single factor, two-way two factors)
❑ Correlation between variables: Simple/Multi Regression for prediction

Notice that this is not a full-scale research project, and that self-collected data might not be
sufficient. Hence, you can ask for data from various sources.

You should work in a group of two or at most 3; It should follow a basic principle that “the
more members, the more standards required”.

You are strongly encouraged to come to my office hours to discuss your project ideas,
progress, and difficulties.

Project Proposal: (20%)

By this first milestone, you should have selected a topic of interest, found some notes or
textbooks that discuss your project subject matter, identified relevant data sources (if
applicable), begun exploring the literature surrounding the question/topic, and discussed
your ideas with the course staff (instructor/TA). Your project proposal deliverable is a 1/2 - 1
page report describing the questions or problems (related to the topic) you intend to tackle,
why you are interested in them, prior work on this problem (if applicable), what data you
intend to use in your analyses, and the principal challenges that you anticipate (if
applicable).
If you would like to receive feedback about particular aspects of your proposal, please
indicate this in your submission.
I can try to help in problem selection. Ideally, the problem should be something you are very
interested in. As such, it might be helpful to first tell me about your interests (maybe after
class or in office hours), and we can try to think of something to work on.

Progress Report: (20%)

By this second milestone, you should have some initial results to share; For example, you
can share your deep understanding about your dataset, you may have discovered
something new via the data when applying some data analysis skills, you may have got
some answers for questions you posed in the project proposal, etc.

Your progress report deliverable is a write-up of no more than 2 pages (single-spaced; not
including references) describing what you have accomplished so far and, briefly, what you
intend to do in the remainder of the term. You should be able to reuse at least part of the
text of this milestone in your final report.

Final Report: (30%)

When you learn more data analysis skills, you can keep using them to explore your data
more.

Your final project report could be a scientific research report, a poster, or a video clip.

i) A scientific research report should be around 5-8 pages in length (using at most 12 point
font, maximum 1 inch margins, and single-spaced) and should follow a typical scientific
style, including abstract, introduction, main part, acknowledgements and references etc.
The write-up should clearly define your problem or question of interest, introduce and
detail your approach. A comprehensive empirical evaluation could follow, or some proofs of
some results, along with an interpretation of your results. Any elucidation of the theoretical
properties of an empirical method under consideration is also welcome.

ii) A poster should be designed and organized effectively including title, abstract or
summary, short introduction, important/interesting/amazing finding from your research
project, conclusion, acknowledgments, your name and institutional affiliation. An effective
poster should be able to convey your information easily to the readers.

iii) A video clip should be about 5-10 minutes. The content could be the same as in a poster
but you should present your project actively in your own style.

If this work was done in collaboration with someone outside of the class (e.g., a professor),
please describe their contributions in an acknowledgements section.

Final Project Presentation: (30%)

On the Presentation Day (Thursday, Dec 14), you (and your group members) should present
your own work to the whole class to share your findings, then we all can discuss about your
project.

HAVE FUN!