Project tips + resources

Modified

August 13, 2024

The project is very open ended. For instance, in creating a compelling visualization(s) of your data in R, there is no limit on what tools or packages you may use. You do not need to visualize all of the data at once. A single high quality visualization will receive a much higher grade than a large number of poor quality visualizations.

In the final product(s), unless you have a specific rationale to include them, make sure the printing of code chunks is turned off with the option echo: false. In addition to code chunks, ensure all messages are turned off with the options warning: false and message: false.

Finally, pay attention to details in your deliverables. Neatness, coherency, and clarity will count.

Tips

  • Ask questions if any of the expectations are unclear.

  • Code: In your write up your code should be hidden (echo: false) so that your document is neat and easy to read. However your document should include all your code such that if I re-render your .qmd file I should be able to obtain the results you presented.

    • Exception: If you want to highlight something specific about a piece of code, you’re welcome to show that portion.

  • Merge conflicts will happen, issues will arise, and that’s fine! Commit and push often, and ask questions when stuck.

  • Make sure each team member is contributing, both in terms of quality and quantity of contribution (we will be reviewing commits from different team members).

    • All team members are expected to contribute equally to the completion of this assignment and group assessments will be given at its completion - anyone judged to not have sufficient contributed to the final product will have their grade reduced. While different teams members may have different backgrounds and abilities, it is the responsibility of every team member to understand how and why all code and approaches in the assignment works.

“Do I need to … to get a good grade?”

It’s an open-ended project. We award points for what you do, we never take points off for what you don’t do. There are many things that we consider difficult (combining multiple datasets, reformatting data, collecting from web pages), so if you find that any of them make sense, we will recognize that in our consideration of how ambitious you are. None of them are required.

Students often find this kind of open-ended project difficult because it requires more independence and feels more risky. We’ve built in multiple low-stakes checkpoints to help make sure we give you feedback and reduce the feeling of “flying blind”. But it’s also the most realistic and valuable experience to prepare you for what you will do after graduation, and the thing that alums most often remember years later.

Formatting + communication

Suppress code and warnings

  • Include the following in the YAML of your report.qmd to suppress all code, warnings, and other messages.
execute:
  echo: false
  warning: false

Headers

Use headers to clearly label each section. Make sure there is a space between the previous line and the header. Use appropriate header levels.

References

Include all references in a section called “References” at the end of the report. This course does not have specific requirements for formatting citations and references. Optional: Use Quarto’s citation support for generating your reference. See Citations & Footnotes on the Quarto documentation for more on that.

Appendix

If you have additional work that does not fit or does not belong in the body of the report, you may put it at the end of the document in section called “Appendix”. The items in the appendix should be properly labeled. The appendix should only be for additional material. The reader should be able to fully understand your report without viewing content in the appendix. We will not grade your appendix.

Resize figures

Resize plots and figures to appropriate dimensions based on the design of your final product(s). For Quarto documents, to resize individual figures set fig-width and fig-height in chunk options, e.g.,

#| label: plot1
#| fig-height: 3
#| fig-width: 5

replacing plot1 with a meaningful label and the height and width with values appropriate for your write up.

Resize all figures in a Quarto website: Include the fig-height and fig-width options in the YAML header as shown below:

execute:
  fig-height: 3
  fig-width: 5

Replace the height and width values with values appropriate for your write up.

Arranging plots

Arrange plots in a grid, instead of one after the other. This is especially useful when displaying plots for exploratory data analysis and to check assumptions.

If you’re using ggplot2 functions, the patchwork package makes it easy to arrange plots in a grid.