COSC 301 Project

Introduction

One of the best parts of Data Science is that after learning just a little bit of background language, your world will open up drastically and you now have the power to explore whole datasets! It’s a whole new world…

via GIPHY

You can find a dataset about something that you’re passionate about like climate change, music, financial information, vacation rentals, flight prices, stock prices, population data, vaccine efficacy, etc… Then practice using the techniques from this course on this dataset, and start exploring interesting questions, as well as more advanced data science techniques. Research shows that intrinsic motivation (defined below) have significant effects in students being more genuinely engaged in the learning activities, more dedicated to the task achieving deeper learning, and more persistent in the face of learning challenges [Vansteenkiste et al., 2004].

Tip

Definition: “Intrinsic motivation refers to people’s spontaneous tendencies to be curious and interested, to seek out challenges and to exercise and develop their skills and knowledge, even in the absence of operationally separable rewards”.[Di Domenico and Ryan, 2017].

Logistics

We will do an activity in class to help you formulate your groups.

Group Size

The optimal group size for this project is a group of 3. I encourage you to work in a group, and I expect that you will learn a lot more working collaboratively, including how to use Git and GitHub in a team setting. This will be an excellent skill to put on your CV, and it will also be much closer to what happens in real life. In very rare cases, individual groups will be permitted, by request only and by arrangement with the instructor.