Class Projects

In this project, you will pick a primary research article where the authors have included their data.  Your end goal will be to create an R-Markdown document that summarizes the paper and (1) reproduces a figure/results from their data, and/or (2) analyzes and visualizes their data in ways not done in their paper.  The resulting R-Markdown document should include at least the following material (organized in sections as you see fit):

• Overview (Overview of paper and statement of problem)
• Discussion of experimental design
• Discussion of statistical analyses
• Results (Your recreation and/or data visualization and analysis)
• Appendix (Data manipulation (i.e. raw data -> educational data)) - Note that you can embed this section within your Results section, i.e. embed R-chunks that manipulate, visualize, and analyze the data throughout your exposition.
• References

Data Repositories

I recommend searching for articles of interest in the Dryad Digital Repository,  but articles with supporting data not stored on Dryad are also fair game.

Teams

• Undergraduates:  1-4 people per team
• Graduates:  Work individually

Milestones

• Milestone #1 (Friday, March 25): Pick teams and paper (Google Form)
• Milestone #2 (Friday, April 8): Paper outlined and summarized
• Milestone #3 (Friday, April 22): Data analysis/manipulation/cleaning complete
• Milestone #4 (Friday, April 29): Full draft complete
• Milestone #5 (Monday, May 9):  Final draft

Grading

Milestones #1-4 will not be graded and are recommended to keep you on track.  The final draft will be 5% of your final grade.

What to turn in

Please turn in a compressed and archived file on Blackboard of the following:

• R-Markdown (.Rmd file)
• Knitted Word document
• Original data

Only one member from each group need submit their work.  MAKE SURE ALL GROUP MEMBER NAMES ARE ON THE R-MARKDOWN AND KNITTED WORD DOCUMENT.  

For those unfamiliar with zipping/archiving files:

How to compress and archive files on a PC:  Select all the files you want to ZIP.  Right-Click on the files, and select "Send To - Compressed (zipped) Folder".  A ZIP/Archive containing all the files will be created.

How to compress and archive files on a Mac:  To compress a file, a folder, or a group of files in Mac OS X, select the item(s) in the Finder and then either choose File -> Compress Item Name, or right-click on the selected item(s) and choose Compress Item Name.

Submit Project