Projects

Students will work in groups of three to carry out projects involving application of the statistical methods covered in the course to problems of their own choosing. You are responsible for finding your own project partners. I will not assign groups. I will be happy to work with you at each stage of your project. Each group of students will:

• Formulate a research question
• Obtain a dataset that can be used to address this question; you may
  • collect your own data,
  • obtain a dataset from the web, from a book, from an instructor in your major field, or from some other source, or
  • see us for a choice of datasets
• determine an appropriate method of analysis
• use SAS to check the data
• use SAS to carry out the analysis
• report and interpret the results

I will expect more sophisticated projects from graduate students and other students registered for STAT:4200.

Projects will be carried out in three phases. Please meet with either one of us at least once while you are working on each phase.

• Project proposal (due 4/04) This is a detailed description of what you plan to do, including question(s) to be addressed, dataset to be used, methods to be applied. Also specify your intended method of presentation for the final project. (See below.)
• Project interim report (due 4/18) This informal report will indicate that your project is ``on track." All computing should be done. Turn in code and output, and a brief summary (hand-written is O.K.) of what the results mean and what remains to be done.

  In addition, include an itemized list of what specific tasks each member of the project team has done to date on the project.

• Project presentation (must be posted or submitted by 05/02)

  Projects must be finalized in a form that can be shared with the entire class, such as:

  • posting a document on the course web page
  • preparing a poster
  • giving an oral presentation with overheads, slides, or computer images
  Posters and oral presentations will be given in class during the week of 05/02. We will read the documents posted on the course web page in lab on Fri. 5/06.

Along with the final project, the team must turn in an itemized list of each person's contributions to the project.