Day 11 Semester Project

Semester projects may deal with any topic that interests you [the student], as long as it is approved by the instructor.

Broadly, projects are expected to identify a research problem and develop a designed experiment that is appropriate for solving that problem. Projects consist of a manuscript and a tutorial that describes the research problem, the experiment design and the treatment design.

11.1 Learning objectives

  • Apply content learned in class in a real-life problem, connected to the student’s research program, including:
    • Writing the materials and methods section of a paper using statistical notation.
    • Writing detailed supporting material that clearly connects R code with statistical models.
    • Interpret the results from the statistical model and connect them to the real-life problem.

11.2 Partial deadlines

11.2.1 Project proposal - Due Sunday February 1st at noon CT

Write a 1 or 2 page-long project proposal that (a) includes the background of your problem (i.e., why is this important?) and (b) states your research objective.

11.2.2 Written report - Due Wednesday April 20 at 2pm CT for peer review

Submit a manuscript to one of your classmates. The manuscript must include Abstract (250w), Introduction (~500w), M&M (~300-500w), Results (~400w), Discussion (~400w), Conclusions (~100w).

11.2.3 Oral presentation - Due May 9

Prepare a 15 minute presentation of the core aspects of your project. Presentations should include at least:

  • Motivation/Background
  • Methods, including a clear and complete description of the statistical model and code
  • Discussion of strengths and weaknesses
  • Conclusions

11.2.4 Written report and reproducible tutorial - Due May 15

  • Manuscript must include a publication-ready analysis.
    • Must include Abstract (250w), Introduction (~500w), M&M (~300-500w), Results (~400w), Discussion (~400w), Conclusions (~100w).
    • Last paragraph in the Introduction should clearly state the research gap and the research objectives.
  • Publication-ready tutorial/R documentation
  • See evaluation rubric on Canvas.