README.md

Final Project, Part 2: Project Design Writeup

PROMPT

Project outlines are a valuable resource when working with data projects, as they help keep your project organized. A well constructed outline can clarify your goals and serve as a checklist when conducting research and analysis.

For this project, you will need to complete a problem statement and research design outline for one of the three lightning talks you designed during pt. 1. This will serve as the starting point for your analysis. Make sure to include a specific aim and hypthesis, well-defined risks and assumptions, and clearly articulated goals and success metrics.

Remember, completing this task earlier will give you more chances to iterate and improve!

Goal: Create an outline of your research design approach, including hypothesis, assumptions, goals, and success metrics.

DELIVERABLES

Project Design Writeup

• Requirements:

  • Well-articulated problem statement with "specific aim" and hypothesis, based on your lightning talk

  • An outline of any potential methods and models

  • Detailed explanation of extant data available (ie: build a data dictionary or link to pre-built data dictionaries)

  • Describe any outstanding questions, assumptions, risks, caveats

  • Demonstrate domain knowledge, including specific features or relevant benchmarks from similar projects

  • Define your goals and criteria, in order to explain what success looks like

• Bonus:

  • Consider alternative hypotheses: if your project is a regression problem, is it possible to rewrite it as a classification problem?

  • "Convert" your goal metric from a statistical one (like Mean Squared Error) and tie it to something non-data people can understand, like a cost/benefit analysis, etc.

• Submission:

  • TBD by instructor.

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TIMELINE

Deadline	Deliverable	Description
Lesson 8	Part 1 - Lightning Presentation	Present 3 Problem Statements
Lesson 14	Part 2 - Experiment Writeup	Research Design Problem Statement & Outline
Lesson 16	Part 3 - Exploratory Analysis	Dataset Approval and Exploratory Analysis
Lesson 18	Part 4 - Notebook Draft	iPython Notebook & Model Draft
Lesson 20	Part 5 - Presentation	Present Your Final Report

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EVALUATION

Your project will be assessed using the following standards:

1. Identify the Problem

Rubric: Click here for the complete rubric.

Requirements for these standards will be assessed using the scale below:

Score | Expectations
----- | ------------
**0** | _Incomplete._
**1** | _Does not meet expectations._
**2** | _Meets expectations, good job!_
**3** | _Exceeds expectations, you wonderful creature, you!_

While your total score is a helpful gauge of whether you've met overall project goals, specific scores are more important since they'll show you where to focus your efforts in the future!

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RESOURCES

Starter Code

• Please use the template provided.

Suggestions for Getting Started

• The more time you spend researching, the less time you'll likely spend writing; this is a positive sign!

• While researching, keep track of all of your resources. Make sure they're trustworthy.

• If you've seen similar work online, see if you can find the code that implemented the data munging. It might come in handy!

• If your project requires using an API, make sure you can get access to it. Not everyone gives away API keys immediately, and you don't want to be caught with no data with one week left to work!

Specific Tips

• Provide a sense of depth and scale to the project, which can be used to guide where the majority of your time should be spent working on the project.

• Show a clear connection between the datasets and the problem presented. The project should avoid working with independent variables (or features) that would not ordinarily be available in order to predict your target.