Subject: 36-303: Team E - your project From: Brian Junker Date: 1/24/2012 11:10 AM To: ZhiJun Huang , Cen Zhou , Jiaxi Cui , Terence Kwak , Emily Lee Dear Team E, I am aware that your team was formed by ZhiJun with the idea that an extension of her SURG project could be the team project for 36-303. This is possible, but *not* guaranteed, as I discussed with Zhijun earlier. I want to clearly state my expectations for your project proposals, and actual project, given that Zhijun has already done a lot of work on her SURG project: I expect this team to produce two interesting and feasible proposals, just as every other team would do. You will need to develop all of the same features (proposal, target population, sampling frame, mode of data collection, important variables to measure, etc.) for *both* projects, just as every other team would. One of your two project proposals will, I think, be Zhijun's project extension. If it fits with my goals for 36-303, I will accept that extension as the team project for 303, but this depends on a couple of things: (1) The extended project must use the scientific and statistical survey methods taught in this class. Zhijun's SURG project is potentially interesting but not designed to withstand scientific/statistical scrutiny (that's fine for her SURG project, as she and I discussed, just not fine for this class). (2) The extension of Zhijun's project must (as all 303 project must) be feasible for you to do in the time allotted during this semester. (3) I must be able to see, throughout the semester, that there is enough to do in the extended project for all five team members to work on and learn the methods in this class. This may be especially hard to accomplish, and will require more thought on your part, because Zhijun has done quite a lot of work on the project already. For example, * Will all of you be able to find articles on Zhijun's topic that are not ones that she has already researched for SURG? * When you come to design the questionnaire, is the work already done by Zhijun? * etc. To help me evaluate these things, I will require that Zhijun include her SURG proposal, and a detailed summary of her work to date, with your proposals for this class. (It would probably be a good idea for all of you to read these things.) As I said above, I will consider Zhijun's project extension to be your preferred choice when I look at your two project proposals. If there are any problems with (1), (2), or (3), however, I will ask you to do a different project for 36-303. see you in class, -BJ -- Brian Junker (412) 268 - 2718 Department of Statistics brian@stat.cmu.edu 232 Baker Hall FAX: (412) CMU-STAT Carnegie Mellon University or (412) 268-7828 Pittsburgh PA 15213 USA WWW: http://www.stat.cmu.edu/~brian/