STATS 32: Final Project & Proposal

Click here for a PDF version of the final project guidelines.

Final Project (80%)

To demonstrate your understanding of the material we have covered, you will perform a data analysis project in R. Each person should submit their own project. While you may discuss ideas and troubleshoot code with each other, each person must submit a unique project.

Here are the project minimum requirements:

• 1 .Rmd file, as well as 1 .html file. (Don't worry about what these file formats are and how to create them right now; we'll talk about this in Week 3.)
• Use a dataset that we have not used in class. If using an external dataset, provide the data file and/or a link to it.
• An "Introduction" section describing the problem and the datasets to be used.
• A "Data analysis" section where you have code. Code should have accompanying text that describes what the code is doing and interprets the results.
• At least 3 data visualizations (not all of the same type).
• A "Conclusion" section to summarize the results of the analysis, as well as any deviations from the project proposal.

Project Proposal (20%)

For the project proposal, submit a 1-2 paragraph description of your final project. You should provide details on the problem you wish to explore, any datasets that you will use, and potential visualizations. The proposal is a way for me to make sure that you have enough structure and data to complete the project.

The project proposal should be submitted as a text file (any format will do).

In implementing your final project, you should try to stick as closely to your proposal as possible. If you are unable to do so, please provide a paragraph in your final project to explain the deviations from the proposal.

Grading & Deadlines

Both the project proposal and final project should be submitted through Canvas.

The project proposal is due by Oct 19 (Fri), 23:59:59 and is worth 20%.

The final project is due by Nov 2 (Fri), 23:59:59 and is worth 80%.

For each late day, a multiplicative penalty factor of 0.8 will be applied. Work that is submitted more than 2 days after the due date will receive 0 points. If you foresee that you may have difficulty meeting these deadlines, please come and speak with me immediately.

What might the final project look like?

Here are some examples of good student projects from previous runs of this class:

• World Happiness Analysis, Clementine Chou.
• An (Incomprehensive) Analysis of the College Scorecard Data, Alex Hurtado.
• Oregon Timber Harvest, Sierra Killian.
• SAT Score Analysis, Angela Luo.

Here are some examples that I found online which would fit what I'm looking for in a final project:

• Network analysis of Game of Thrones family ties (but shorter)
• Sentiment Analysis of The Lord of the Rings with tidytext (but longer)
• Text analysis of Trump's tweets confirms he writes only the (angrier) Android half
• Reproducible Finance with R: Sector Correlations
• The heat is on... or is it? Trend Analysis of Toronto Climate Data
• Mid Table Mediocrity

I don't really have ideas for what data to use...

Here are some ideas for datasets that you might want to explore:

• Governmental or NGO open data websites (e.g. City of Palo Alto, State of California, World Bank)
• Awesome Public Datasets: A compilation of links to various open datasets
• Google Dataset Search: A tool for searching for open datasets
• Data which you have collected yourself