Project Proposal Guide

Project Proposal Guide#

Your project proposal is essential for two reasons:

  1. It aids you in devising a concrete plan for your project.

  2. It allows me to gauge if your project meets the expectations and to guide you in refining it if required.

Expectations for the Project#

While choosing a domain for your data mining application and crafting a data mining pipeline for a specific issue, you have the freedom to be innovative. The application area, the techniques you decide on, and your project’s results are all determined by your proposal.

However, I have set a few expectations for every project:

  • You should design and execute a full data mining pipeline from its inception to its conclusion.

  • Your project should be well-researched, fitting, and feasible within the set timeframe. If uncertain, please discuss with me during office hours.

  • You can collect your own dataset or use a publicly available dataset.

  • Some method of evaluating data mining strategies is needed, such as:

    • Running a concise study comparing your strategy with another,

    • Assessing the accuracy of your model by holding back validation data,

    • Assessing the robustness of your model,

    • Etc.

  • I expect you to effectively communicate your methodology and findings in a final report.

    • This will take the form of a well-organized and well-written explanations with publication-quality visualzations.

I will consider the overall difficulty of your project when determining whether or not it is sufficient (or infeasible) for your final project. For example, if your are collecting your own data, your pipeline will need to be simpler because of the extra time and effort requried for data collection.

Guidelines for the Proposal#

Your project proposal should be under 3 pages, be formatted under the following headings, and address each of the following points:

Overview of the Project#

  • Present a concise overview of your project.

  • List all the team members.

  • Specify the domain of application you’re delving into.

  • Highlight the particular issue you’re addressing.

  • Offer a brief insight into your approach.

  • Enumerate your reasons and motivations.

  • Outline the goals you aspire to achieve with this project.

Data plan#

  • What’s the data you intend to use for this project?

  • If you’re considering gathering data on your own, outline the process.

  • In case you’re using a pre-existing dataset, mention which one and explain why you chose it. Who gathered this data and for what primary objective?

  • What proprocessing do you expect to need to perform on your data?

Implementation plan#

  • Describe your proposed data mining pipeline

  • How will you implement your data mining pipeline?

  • What components do you plan to use existing software/libraries for? Which software/libraries do you plan to use?

Evaluation plan#

  • How do you plan to evaluate your data mining algorithm?

  • Provide a broad overview of how you plan to evaluate your approach. How will you measure success? Will you compare to an alternative method? Measure accuracy with a ground truth testing set?

Plan for group collaboration#

  • What is your plan for collaborating as a group? Do you plan to meet regularly in-person, over zoom, or coordinate asynchronously on a messaging application like discord?

  • How do you plan to collaboratively implement your data mining pipeline? How will you manage your code and your data?

Timeline#

  • Outline your week-by-week goals for completing your project by the final report deadline

  • Feel free to communicate this timeline as a bulleted list, a table, etc.

References#

  • List your references.

Include a project title and the members of your group as part of your proposal. Your proposal should be organized into clearly labeled sections (one to address each of the eight categories above). Each section should be written in paragraph form (with the exception of the references and the timeline section where you may opt to use a list or a table). Your proposal will be graded on the quality of your writing as well as your answers to the previously listed prompts.

It should be evident that your group has thoroughly researched the area and formulated a plan to achieve your goals. I recognize that things may change during the course of the project, but I’m looking here to make sure you have a solid initial plan. Any significant project like this requires significant prework before implementation.

Grading#

The proposal will be graded as follows:

Item

Points

Project overview thoroughly addresses all required points

10

Related work section comprehensively addresses required points and demonstrates a clear understanding of the field

15

Data plan section is complete, addressing all required points in a clear and logical manner

10

Implementation plan and timeline sections are well-developed, detailing a feasible and organized approach

25

Evaluation plan and group collaboration plan are clearly articulated and address all required points

20

References are properly cited, and the related work section includes all relevant sources

5

The proposal is well-formatted, with clear, formal, and precise writing throughout

15

I reserve the right to award flex points for exemplary work in any areas of this project.

Delivery#

Please submit your project proposal (in PDF format) to Blackboard and your team GitHub repository. Only one submission is required per team.

All components of your final project are subject to GVSU and the School of Computing’s academic honesty policies. Violations of these policies may result in failure from the course. You will recieve no credit for a proposal that violates the academic honesty policy in any way.