Group projects are canceled on account of UH changes to classes in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.

You will work in groups of five students to apply what you learn in this class to real-world data. Your group may choose any subject, subject to my approval. The overall goal of your project is to answer some question about the data.

  • Your project must involve a dataset on which you apply statistical tools. You are not asked to gather data by hand, and instead to use publicly available sources.

  • You will need to write code to implement the statistical methods you wish to use on your data, and for visualization. You may use whatever programming language you are comfortable with. I suggest either Python or R.

  • You will write two reports—see below for more information—decribing the findings of your project. These should be written in either LaTeX or a word processor

Example project topics:

  • Predicting flight delays for planes leaving HNL.

  • Measuring rainfall in Mānoa valley.

  • Determining the expected salary of a STEM professional in Hawaiʻi, and how it compares to cost of living.

  • Determining which genre of film produces the highest profit.

  • Comparing Hawaiian islands by rate of automobile accidents per capita.

Timeline

  • Jan 31: Groups finalized, decide on project topics and titles.

  • Feb 28 Mar 6: Submit first preliminary report. See the rubric here.

  • Mar 27 Apr 3: Submit second preliminary report.

  • Apr 29: Submit final reports.

  • Apr 29–May 4: In-class presentations.

  • May 6: Submit individual reflections.

  • May 6: Peer evaluations.

Grading

The break-down for your grade on the group project is as follows.

  • 40% Final report

  • 20% Preliminary reports

  • 20% In-class presentation

  • 10% Individual reflection

  • 10% Peer evaluation

Note that final report, preliminary report, and in-class presentation grades will be assigned by group, while individual reflection and peer evaluation grades will be assigned individually.

Preliminary reports

You will submit two preliminary reports, the first one month after the deadline to form groups and the second two months after. The purpose of these are to be progress reports, and to ensure that you are on-track to successfully complete your project. Approximately one month and two mo the final report for your project is due you will submit preliminary reports. These reports should give an overview of your project, explain the work you have already carried out, and explain what work you have left and how you plan to go about finishing. While much of the content in your preliminary reports can be reused for your final reports, these are not simply early drafts of your final report. Rather, they are progress reports.

See the Timeline section of this page for a link to the rubrics.

Final reports

Near the end of the semester you will submit to me a report about your project. This report should contain the following:

  • A discussion of the background of your project. What sort of data are you looking at? Why is it of interest?

  • A clear statement of the questions you are looking at. What about your data do you want to know?

  • An explanation of the methods you will use to analyze these questions. What statistical techniques did you use? How did you apply them?

  • Your results. What did you show? What conclusions can you draw from the statistical work about the real world?

In addition to submitting the report, you should also submit your code, datasets, and auxiliary resources.

Details as to the requirements and grading for the report will be announced later.

In-class presentations

In addition to the report you submit to me, you will also present your work to your peers. You will give approximately 20 minute presentations in-class. These presentations should summarize the information in your reports.

Details as to the requirements and grading for the presentations will be announced later.

Individual reflections

Besides the work that you submit as a group, you will also submit individual reflections. These are to be short essays reflecting on the group project. What did you learn? How did you contribute to the group? What in the future would you do differently?

Details as to the requirements and grading for the individual reflections will be announced later.

Peer evaluation

A portion of your evaluation for the group projects will come from your group members. We will spend time on the last day of class for you to evaluate each others’ contributions to the projects.