Milestone Due Dates
Proposal |
Thursday, Sep. 25, On paper at the
begining of the class
|
Progress Report |
Thursday, Oct. 18 & Nov. 15, On paper
at the begining of the class |
Presentation/Demo |
Tuesday Dec. 04 & Thursday Dec 05.
|
Final Written Report |
During the Presentation/Demo Day, On paper at the
begining of the class |
Introduction
For
the project, you will work in
teams of either 2, or 3 students on a problem of your choosing that
is
interesting, significant, and relevant to data science.
The
ultimate
goal of your course project is to develop to tackle some
interesting
real-world problem. At the end of the quarter, we will hold a
competition
during our regular class time for your project demonstration. All
members of a
group will receive the same grade on group work. Therefore, it is in
your
interest to choose other group members (ideally, first day of the
class) who have the same goal in the class as you do. It is also in
your
interest to work together and ensure that all tasks are completed
effectively. Your
scores on group work may be adjusted based on your contribution.
The
assignment is flexible: choose a topic of interest to you and your
group and carry out a cohesive,
complete project based around it. The range of possible topics that you
can
choose among is broad. However, the project you pick should incorporate
wide range of data science techniques. I think the most
interesting
problems will be ones in which you identify and work with some
"client" to develop a solution to one of their problems. Such clients
can include organizations with which you are involved, work site, etc.
You can
propose to carry out a project as part of a larger effort. However the
caution
here is that you will need to be able to separate out the contribution
made by
this class' project from the rest.
You will need to prepare a written
project proposal and get it approved by the instructor,
project progress
report, prepare a final report (written),
and give an demo.
Here are some more details about these pieces:
- All
the project reports should be typed and
checked for spelling and grammar. No handwritten reports will be
accepted.
- Projects
will be
group projects (2-3 members)
- Peer-assessment:
Individual student's grades for projects will be influenced by their
teamwork as evaluated by their project group members. This will be applied
as an overall weight to
the term project grade.
- Demo-evaluation:
There will be an evaluation forms each individual student will need to
submit
for each demo. This
will be factored
into the grade for the team demo.
Project
proposal
The proposal should include the
following information: (2
pages or less)
○ Project
participants and email addresses
○ Problem
statement
○ Work
plan sketch
(what tasks do you expect to do and in
what order, how long do you expect them to take, and who will be
responsible
for the tasks).
● You
can take as
much space as you need for the project
report, but I would guess that most would be in the two-page range.
● You
need to have
an acceptable proposal submitted by
the deadline.
Progress status report
In this report, you should assess the progress you are making
on your project and update the work plan as necessary. Include your
group's
names and email addresses on this document as well. This is not likely
to be a
long report--just a checkpoint document to make sure you're on a good
track--
towards completing the project in the available time.
A 2-3 page summary of the problem your
project team is solving, and your high-level approach.
Start with your proposal or previous progress report (if any) and add
the following content to your progress report .
The progress summary report should
inform about,
- Design decisions,
- The target audience for the project (who the users are)
- What tools/technologies will you use and why?
- Data Models - optional
- System architecture and implementation details (if any) -
optional
- What is the overall design? What are the core
features?
- How does the requirements/design satisfy the needs of
your users?
- Screen shots of the user interface or a prototype (if
any).
- Current Status
- What is the current status of the implementation?
- What is left to do?
Final
written Report
A
comprehensive report describing
the project. This should be a "complete" document, so it should
include front matter (title page, abstract, table of content,
chapters),
problem statement, explain your design and implementation and
evaluation. This report should stand by
itself as the
archival description of the project. It’s
likely to be reasonably large document. Written
report will be evaluated both on the quality of the project but also on
the
quality, comprehensibility and completeness of the presentation.
- The
report may include portions of your earlier reports (proposal, progress
report, prototypes, concept, design, etc.).
- The
project report should be typed and checked for spelling and grammar. No
handwritten reports will be accepted.
- Your
evaluation (or evaluation strategy)
- What
are the characteristics of users that you would invite to evaluate this
system and what kind of tasks will you ask them to perform? (if you
have any users)
- What
metrics will you use to evaluate the success of your system?
- Comparison
with existing applications (which)?
- Performance
measures (how will you measure them)?
- Other
criteria?
- You
should address the same questions as those you have addressed in the
previous
reports, only with more details, especially regarding some of the
challenges
that you need to solve and your experimental results if any.
- You should
also include your conclusions from the study and point out how your
work can be
further extended (i.e., future work).
- References should
list ALL sources that you used for your project. It
is
recommended that you list your references in the APA
style. All team members must be involved in preparing this
section, and provide a list of URL's, books, or other sources that they
used
for the project.
- Provide
as much graphics as
you can—not only UI components (if any), but any kind of diagrams and
illustrations that
will make it easier for us to understand and evaluate your effort.
Graphics are
always helpful, you have probably heard the saying “a
picture is worth a thousand words”!
- Do
not just show the diagrams—for all figures, tables, and diagrams
provide some narrative
discussion! Unfortunately, diagrams, particularly technical
diagrams, are rarely if ever self-explanatory. You should document the
alternative solutions that you considered as well as the arguments for
the
final choice. Diagrams only represent your final solution, but do not
explain
why you decided on this solutions and what alternatives were
considered. Hence, all diagrams must be accompanied
with
explanation
and discussion of alternatives and tradeoffs. Anything that could lead
to
ambiguity or misunderstanding on the reviewer’s part, should be clearly
explained. Explanations should be written in prose and key arguments
highlighted in bullet points.
- There is no
limit on the number of pages
for the report. Of course,
you should avoid stuffing your report with redundant or irrelevant
material.
Final
project presentations / demos
- Demo Evaluation Form and
Team Member Evaluation Form
- We will hold a
project presentation/demo workshop -- during our regular class time in
the last week.
- If you are
presenting a demo, please check that all available resources are ready
for you. If your demo crashes or doesn't work for some reason, that
will reflect negatively on your team.
- Your
presentation/demo
should briefly and succinctly tell us *why* we should care and *what*
interesting insight your team has. Give us some insight into the tough
/ cool / interesting aspects of your project. This is your time to
shine, so carefully prepare what exactly you want to show off that will
impress us. View the audience as potential investors in your project --
so convince us that your problem is important, that your team has the
appropriate "killer idea" to tackle the problem, and that you have
delivered an awesome initial prototype!