Objectives

• Develop a project or research question that requires data collection
• Collect original data from the environment around us
• Collect data from online sources
• Clean and analyze our first-hand data
• Visualize and present data in any format (i.e., creative presentation, essay, infographic)

Mini Project

• Learn hardware basics
• Collect small amount of data from a single sensor
• Utilize data to learn basics of data cleansing and analysis

Proposing your course project (steps to follow)

• Come up with a few areas of interest (e.g., environment, education, agriculture, etc.)
• Find a few other people who share one of these interests
• Determine what you want the final result to look like
• Collect original data using hardware you’ve built
• Pull in data from other sources to enrich your findings and analysis
• Decide how you’ll present everything
• Ask Mike or Tom for any guidance!

Real Project

• Will be proposed, negotiated and approved through Mike
• Includes 4 self-imposed milestones that will be used to show you’re making progress toward your end-goal.
• Minimum 3 sources of data (2 should be original data created and collected by your group)
• Documentation of your hardware prototype
• At least one high-fidelity vizualization from your data
• A written overview of how you cleaned and handled your data (does not necessarily have to be part of your final presentation, but a write up of how you got rid of noise and how prepped it for final analysis will need to be submitted).

Be Creative I’m open to almost anything from living, breathing, data-driven art exhibitions to citizen science data collections to a cool infographic or even a standard research paper. Whatever floats your boat, we’ll try hard to make it work!