Guidelines for final projects
General considerations:
- The main objectives of the final project
are: (i) to demonstrate
the knowledge and skills you have accumulated in this course,
while (ii) learning as much as you can from a new data set
- Analysis and writeup should be comparable
in depth to recent
homework assignments, except you should include a more detailed
description
of the data and modeling objectives and a summary of relevant
background research.
- Several "designated project" options
will be announced later in the course--watch this space for further
developments
- Approximate weight = 2 HW assignments
- Hand in electronically following the same
guidelines as for homework
Writeups will be judged on:
- Content: depth and quality of
background research,
correctness of analysis, understanding of modeling concepts, economic
and statistical interpretation of model
- Organization: highlighting of
important results, effective
and appropriate use of graphs and tables, clarity, documentation of
data sources
- Creativity and
originality: the final project is more open-ended than the
previous homework assignments, so it is up to you to ask the right
questions and (in the case of a custom project) to acquire the
necessary data