Learning Goals

Only one: Have students engage in the data/science research pipeline in as faithful a manner as possible while maintaining a level suitable for novices:

Drawing

Format

  • Your final project will center around writing a “data journalism” style newspaper article suitable for publication in The Pacific Index newspaper. In other words, your target audience is the Pacific University community and your focus should be on sociology-related data. Examples of such types of journalism can be found on:
  • You must flex your “statistical and data science” muscles you’ve built this semester. In particular:
    • Data visualization and manipulation
    • Statistical Inference: hypothesis testing, confidence intervals, and (possibly) regression

Administrative Notes

  • Submission Format: Each group must create a single RStudio Server shared project that is shared amongst the group members and with me (please email the URL to me). All your work will be centrally located here; do not email me any files.
  • Project Proposal: Submitted latest by Monday, November 21 by 2 PM
    • In class: Printed copy of project proposal
    • In the RStudio Server group shared folder:
      • Electronic copy of project proposal
      • All data files and if possible an .Rmd file that loads them into R so that you can View() them.
  • Feedback Session: Held latest by Wednesday, November 30
    • To make sure your project idea is feasible, after you’ve submitted your proposal and I’ve read it, your group must schedule to speak to me during office hours so that I can give feedback. Please note the earlier you complete this, the more breathing room this will give you.
  • Electronic-Only Final Project Submission: Due Monday, December 5
    • In the RStudio Server group shared folder:
      • A final_project.Rmd file that completely reproduces your analysis i.e. I should have to press Knit only once to recreate the entire HTML page.
      • All necessary data files.
      • Publish your final project to Rpubs.com. (Send me an email with a link to your Rpubs submission final result.)
    • Individually: A Google Forms survey, which I will email on Friday, December 2 by 5pm.
    • Your project won’t be considered submitted until I give you email confirmation that everything looks good.
  • Office Hours: Scheduled by appointment
  • Honor Code: This is the equivalent of an academic term paper; all honor code rules about plagarism and citations apply.

Project Proposal

Write-Up

Your group proposal (to be submitted in print and electronically in a RStudio Server shared project) should contain the following:

  1. Title: The title of your project.
  2. Group Members: List of all group members.
  3. Purpose: Describe the general topic/phenomenon you want to explore:
    • Why should a Pacific student be interested in your work?
    • What do you hope people will learn from your project?
  4. Scientific Question: Journalism, just like academic writing, has the goal of answering questions, but with a slightly more informal tone. What is the scientific question you want to answer using data?
  5. Data Sources: Describe where you will find/access your data. Be as specific as you can, listing URLs and file formats if possible.
  6. Data Format: Describe what your tidy format data set looks like:
    • How many tables will you have? What are the observational units of each table?
    • How many rows does each table have?
    • How many columns does each table have and what are their names i.e. the variables? What are their units?

Data Sets

  • Your immediate goal should be to get some data loaded into RStudio. This may take a few rounds of back-and-forth discussion with me as finding the right data sets will be among the bigger challenges of this project, as it needs to balance:
    • Being complex enough to use the statistical and data sciences toolbox developed this semester.
    • Being rich enough to be able to answer meaningful scientific questions with them.
    • Not being so complex and rich that you are overwhelmed, as you are only novices.
  • Having two or more different data sets to join is not an explicit requirement for this project; your scientific question will dictate this need.
  • If you’re having trouble finding specific data that you have in mind, make an appointment with the Pacific University librarians.

Electronic-Only Final Project Submission

Roughly speaking, your final project submission will have two major components:

  • The actual journalism article. As to knowing the guidelines (length, format, tone), just ask yourself: “What does a newspaper/online news story sound like?”
  • A supplementary materials section that goes more in depth about the nitty-gritty details, that one might want to spare casual readers from, but include for people wanting to learn more.
  • A final_project.Rmd template file is available here. Please download this file to your computer and then Upload it to the RStudio Server.