Step 2: Prepare a pitch presentation (W08 lab)

2023/24 Autumn Term

You are asked to tell us what you plan to do for your project. What interesting questions do you want to pose to your data?

Author

Dr. Jon Cardoso-Silva

You will find what we expect to see in your Week 08 presentation on this page.

The product

🎯 The goal

Your group will present a pitch of what you aim to do in your final projects. Here are the things we want to hear about:

which data sources you will use
the volume of data you aim to collect
how you plan to collect the data (e.g., web scraping, APIs, etc.)
the questions you plan to pose to the data

Important

Your primary data source must be collected by you, using web scraping, an API, or a database/dataset of sufficient complexity (for example, the files in IMDB’s non-commercial database).

You cannot use boring ‘click and download’ CSVs, JSON, etc., as your primary source, but you can use those to complement your analysis.

There is only one exception to this rule: You can use a static primary data source if you will complement it massively with an AI-related API.

For example:

you can use a static data source of text and use Hugging Face Inference API to classify the topics of the text
you can use a static data source of images and use Google Vision API to classify the images or AWS Rekognition to detect faces in the images.

You get the idea.

🖼️ The format

The presentation has the following constraints (to make things more fun and challenging):

You will have ONLY 10 minutes to present your pitch.
You will have ONLY 3 slides to present your pitch.
- Plan accordingly! If you add a ‘Welcome’ or ‘Thank you’ slide, you will be wasting precious slide space.
All team members must present, but you can decide how to split the time between you.
Share your .ppt or .pdf or .html (if you use revealjs) file on your relevant #group- channel on Slack.

You will receive feedback on the feasibility of your project and the quality of your presentation.

The process

Here is how I suggest you plan your work:

📅 The timeline

As soon as you fill out the form in 👥 Step 1, you should have come up with a group name (you can’t use names like Group 1 or Group A). Your group name will be part of the name of your group’s GitHub repository. Ensure everyone uses the same characters, including capitalization, spaces, etc.

For example, if your group name is The Data Scientists, your GitHub repository will be called the-data-scientists.

Everyone in the group must use the same name in the following steps to get it right.
Go to the #announcements channel on Slack and click on the GitHub Classroom link. The process will be similar to when you were accepting individual assignments. Only this time, you will have to provide a group name.
Schedule your first meeting together. When will you meet? Where? For how long?
During your first meeting, you should decide on a primary data source and what kind of questions you will want to pose to this data.
For this project, the group gets to decide how you will work together. So, use this first meeting to discuss your weaknesses and strengths and decide how to best work together. Write down a form of agreement on how you will work together and push it to your GitHub repository.

This is why we suggest you discuss the following in your first meeting:
- Will everyone work synchronously, simultaneously, on the same or related task? Or would you split the tasks and work asynchronously, with each group member working on their own time?
- How are you going to keep up with each other’s progress? Will you meet in person? Will you create a private group on Slack? Will you use WhatsApp?
- Where and how often will you meet to discuss progress and plan your next steps?
- What if someone is not pulling their weight? How will you deal with that locally before escalating to the teaching team?
- What if one of you gets stuck? How will you help each other?
- How many hours are you putting in per week?
Put this to practice when planning for this week’s presentation. How will you create the slides? Who will present what? How will you practice? When will you practice?

👥 Common sources of group conflicts

I know it’s obvious, but groups are made of human beings! Some minor levels of disagreement and conflict are bound to happen during the project’s development. Thinking about potential sources of conflict right now, at the start of the project, will help you deal with them better when they happen. We will help facilitate the work as a group in the lab of Week 09, but for now, here are some things to consider and discuss as a group:

To some, DS105A is the most crucial course they are taking, and they feel they must get a distinction here. To others, this is just another course, and they are happy with just a pass. Ensure that your expectations are well communicated and understood by all group members. If there is a mismatch in expectations, discuss how you can meet a middle ground.
Your work ethic might also differ. Some people are good at following a plan and don’t need constant reminders. Others can only achieve something if there is a deadline. How are you going to deal with that?
Your levels of expertise might not match. Some people are more comfortable with coding, writing, and presenting than others. Some might love tweaking README files and organizing notebooks, files, and directories. Others might not have picked up this habit (yet)! Do your strengths and weaknesses complement each other? If not, how can you help each other?