GER1000 Quantitative Reasoning

Group Project Instructions

AY2016/2017, Semester 1
1. (Project Group) Projects groups are pre-assigned within each tutorial group, and
will be made known by your first tutorial session. For submission of your project,
you need to know your tutorial group number as well as project group number (see
Point 7 below).
2. (Timeline) Colored texts are hyperlinks.
Week 3-5

Look for appropriate media reports and the corresponding

primary source, and decide on one for the project (Point 3).
Link to some examples are given at the end of timeline.

Week 6

Submit proposal to tutor (Point 4).

Deadline: 2359hrs, 16 September 2016, (Friday).
Narrow down project topic and focus on specific QR questions.

Week 7

Work out approach to answering project questions.

Find additional resources/references if necessary.
Work out division of labour within group.
(Point 3 and Point 10)

Week 8-11 Work on the project (Point 6);

meet with tutor by week 10 (Point 5).
Week 12

Online submission of poster and executive summary (Point 7).

Deadline: 2359h, 05 November 2016 (Saturday).

Week 13

Poster sessions (Point 8).

Online submission of completed Self and Peer Evaluation Form
(Point 9). Deadline: 2359h, 12 November 2016 (Saturday).

Examples

Some sample projects from the previous semester can be found

here: https://goo.gl/ewREXQ. These samples show the flow
from the news article to the poster and the executive summary.
These samples are meant to give you some ideas about the way
the project is done. They may not be the best projects and
should not be followed rigidly.

3. (Nature of Project) The project requires you to critically evaluate a media report
of a quantitative study. To start, choose a news article published after 1 April 2016
in one of the following:
The Straits Times,
TODAY,
The New York Times,
The Guardian,
The Daily Mail,
The Wall Street Journal,
The Economist.
The news article should report on a quantitative study published in a research journal. We shall refer to this research publication as the primary source. Using the
QR Framework, you should analyse and critically evaluate the QR work done in the
primary source, such as how the research question is framed, and how the data are
collected and analysed, etc. After evaluating the primary source, you should conclude whether the primary source research is appropriately reported in the news
article, and justify your conclusion. Your project should be focused, and need not
touch upon all aspects of the research in the primary source or all steps of the QR
Framework. You are advised to choose a news article for which the primary source
is available in the NUS Library (including its very extensive e-resources).
4. (Proposal) You need to submit a proposal for your project by 2359 hours, 16
September 2016 (Friday of Week 6) to your tutor, who will then advise you on
the projects feasibility. Your tutor will inform you of the mode of proposal submission.
The proposal should include a chosen news article from the list above, the primary
source that the news article refers to, as well as two or three QR-related questions
that you will focus on in your project. These questions can pertain to whether the
study is properly designed to minimise bias, whether the study adequately mitigates confounding, whether limitations of the study are sufficiently addressed, etc.
The questions should be specific to the news article and primary source that you
have chosen. Roughly check that the primary source has sufficient details and data
to answer your questions. For your convenience, a template of the proposal is
available here: https://goo.gl/uHNrwz.

5. (Meeting with Tutor) You should work on your project questions as soon as the
proposal is approved by your tutors (Week 7). There will be a mandatory meeting
session for your entire project group with your tutor in Week 8, 9 or 10 to help
clarify doubts and provide advice. To make this meeting productive, by that point,
your group should have looked through the primary source, and formulated a preliminary plan for the project (e.g., what approach you would take to answer the
2-3 questions in your proposal, whether any additional data/resources are needed,
division of labour within your group, etc.).
6. (Deliverables) By the end of Week 12, each group has to complete the following
two items, in which you will present your projects findings:
(i) An A2 size poster on one side;
(ii) A two-A4-page executive summary prepared in font size 11 and 1.5-line
spacing.
Both the poster and the executive summary should focus on the QR issues that
you dealt with in your project. They should not be overly technical you can
include some graphs and charts, but there is no need to include calculations. They
should be targeted at your fellow students in the QR class, i.e., non-specialists,
and should thus be reasonably self-contained such that fellow students who are
not familiar with your project can still appreciate your findings. Note that the
executive summary and the poster are considered stand-alone documents; you
should not have to cross-reference to understand each document.
The executive summary should be written in complete sentences.
The poster should be a scientific poster, with substantive content arising from
your project, as opposed to a publicity poster. It can be computer-prepared or
handwritten. With regard to font size, the guideline is to be clearly legible from a
normal reading distance. For preparation using a computer, the minimum font size
is 14. The poster can be in colour or black-and-white. If your poster is handwritten,
you may take a photograph of it and convert it to PDF for softcopy submission.
The content of the poster and the executive summary can be quite similar. You
are encouraged to think about how best to present your project in the two different
media, with the summary more verbal and the poster more visual.
For both the executive summary and the poster, there need not be a complete bibliography, as is the normal academic practice for such documents. To refer to
a source, you can just use the author name(s) and year of publication, e.g., Smith
(2007). Avoid extensive quotations from any source. The usual academic integrity
protocol should be observed strictly.
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7. (Submission) Softcopies of both the poster and the executive summary must be
submitted in PDF format via IVLE by 2359 hours, 05 November 2016 (Saturday
of Week 12). Please submit early to avoid last-minute system glitches. No late
submission will be entertained.
You must submit the two documents to the IVLE Project folder designated for your
tutorial group. The total size of the two documents should not exceed 10 MB.
You must name your executive summary and poster, respectively, according to the
following format:
[tutorial group code]_[project group number]_summary.PDF
[tutorial group code]_[project group number]_poster.PDF
For example, if you are in Tutorial Group S1, and within it, Project Group 4, and
the document is the poster, then the name of the document should be
S1_4_poster.PDF
Please ensure that you upload to the correct folder; otherwise your tutor will not
be able to find your submission. Please also ensure that all group members full
names and matric numbers are clearly written in both documents; as there are
more than 3000 students in the module, it will be extremely difficult to identify
the authors if their names or matriculation numbers are missing.
8. (Poster Session) In Week 13, a two-hour timeslot will be allocated to your project
group for the "poster session". You need to bring a hardcopy of your poster to the
session where your entire project group will answer questions posed by the tutors.
These sessions will be open to all tutors and students of the module. More details
will be disseminated via IVLE later.
9. (Self and Peer Evaluation) Upon completion of the project, each student is required to submit a completed Self and Peer Evaluation by 2359 hrs, 12 November
2016 (Saturday of Week 13). The evaluation must be completed before you can
receive a mark for the project. More details will be disseminated via IVLE later.
10. (Grading) The following are some things we look out for when grading the projects:
Demonstration of understanding of QR Framework While the project
does not necessarily have to touch on all five steps, it should clearly demonstrate how it fits into the Framework.
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 Critical thinking Approach to project Have you analysed the assumptions made in the primary source? Have you identified the salient QR issues
relating to your project? Have you identified an appropriate approach to discuss these issues? If additional data or resources are needed, have you gone
to the right source to find them?
Correctness of results and their interpretation Are you using the right
tools to critically evaluate the primary source? (Using very sophisticated
tools may not score you extra points. Stick to basic methods mentioned in
the lectures.) Are your results plausible? Are there shortcomings to your
methods or inaccuracies in your results? How should these results and findings be interpreted?
Teamwork How effective is the teams brainstorming? How effective is the
division of labour? How well do the team members come together to integrate and consolidate their work?
Presentation of findings Poster The poster should convince the nontechnical reader that QR has played a crucial role in gaining insights into
a real-life problem. The poster should avoid calculations and technicalities,
but make use of visuals to present data and findings attractively. The challenge is to select the most salient things to include in the limited space of the
poster.
Presentation of findings Executive Summary Similar to the poster, but
in prose form. The Summary can supplement the poster, but it should be
self-contained.