This week your homework assignment is to make some progress on planning your final project.

  1. Read the instructions.

  2. Browse the midterm projects at http://ionides.github.io/531w18/midterm_project. Pick two projects to read carefully. Think about how your project compares to these projects, in terms of (i) writing, (ii) statistical analysis, (iii) coding technique.

  3. Browse the STATS 531 W16 final projects at http://ionides.github.io/531w16/final_project. Pick two projects to read carefully. Two technical aspects to look for: (i) how the model is described, both mathematically and in software; (ii) how does the author deal with the computational demands, such as caching, parallelization on a single machine, or use of a cluster.

  4. Choose a dataset for your final project.

There is nothing to turn in at this time, but you will benefit from making preparatory progress on your final project.