Art: From Kawarazaki Shodo, Take.

Project objectives

The purpose of the open-ended individual project is for you to use your statistical toolkit to address an outstanding research project in a principled, reproducible way. Using a dataset of your choosing, identify an interesting hypothesis, identify appropriate statistical methods, carry out your analysis, and present your results in a reproducible report and oral presentation in a way that is accessible to allied researchers.

Detailed instructions are available in the course GitHub repository.

Learning objectives

Case-specific goals:

  • Design an appropriate statistical analysis from scratch
  • Write and develop a statistically sound analysis plan
  • Gain independence as a practicing statistician to tackle an open-ended research question of your choice

Overall class goals:

  • Solidify skills in reproducible research and programming, including version-control and collaboration via GitHub
  • Critically think about reasonable analysis approaches in the context of real-world data
  • Express statistical models clearly and correctly
  • Develop scientific writing skills by providing clear, concise, data-driven conclusions suitable for allied researchers

Project timeline

  • Proposal (optional)
    • Due Friday, February 18
  • Initial draft (optional)
    • Due Friday, April 1
  • Final manuscript no grace period
    • Due Wednesday, April 27

The proposal and initial draft are optional. However, I highly encourage you to turn in assignments, as you will receive detailed feedback from the instructor.

Note that there is no grace period for the final manuscript - this is because the individual project serves as this course’s final exam and is on the university final exam schedule. Please use your time wisely!

Note: your GitHub report repository and commit history will also be evaluated by the instructor. The GitHub repository must contain the reproducible R Markdown document corresponding to the submitted reports, and will be checked throughout the course of the case study.