Appendix B — Group project assignment

To maximize how much you learn and how much you will retain, you as a group will take what you learn in the course and apply it to create a reproducible project. This project …

During the last session of the course you will work on this assignment. In the last ~20 minutes of this session, the lead instructor will … and re-generate your report to check that it is reproducible.

B.1 Specific tasks

You will be collaborating as a team using … to manage your group assignment. We will set up the project with … for you so you can quickly start collaborating together on the project.

Your specific tasks are:

Sequence of steps for project:

  • Starting point:
    • Learning how to identify what file storage format (e.g. csv or SAS dataset) there are and knowing how convert those files into more efficient formats (like Parquet or a SQL database)
    • Give them a few server environment types, and the same data but with different starting formats. And then they figure out the next steps based on that information
    • Multiple data is big enough to prevent doing it normal way (1 Gb or larger?)
  • Explaining why the original data format might not be ideal and then converting the data into more efficient format
  • Identify what the desired sample is for the dataset, only select and filter data they need for analysis
  • Split the data into smaller chunk to prototype code (running code on all the data later)
  • Run basic analysis (descriptive statistics)… Not modeling
  • Implement some code to run with parallel processing
  • Identifying which format data or items can be downloaded, and converting that to that format

Assumptions:

  • Assume they have taken the intermediate course (need to know functionals and function-based workflows), and either have read or taken the advanced course or are familiar enough with targets

B.2 Quick “checklist” for a good project

B.3 Expectations for the project

What we expect you to do for the group project:

What we don’t expect:

Essentially, the group project is a way to reinforce what you learned during the course, but in a more relaxed and collaborative setting.