INTRODUCTION TO DATA ANALYTICS, Fall2025

Final Project Description, Deliverables, Guidance & Grading Rubric

FINAL PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Considering the analytics workflow, students should work with a medium to large dataset of their choosing, exploring the data for business and real-world understanding, and then prepare their results, findings,and recommendations for a stakeholder presentation.

This will be a summation of allskills students have learned throughout the course, with an emphasis on packaging findings fora non-analytic audience. Employers-not to mention family and friends-will appreciate the extra effort and skill involved in communicating results with a focus on clarity and action.

When choosing a dataset, think about what you want to get out of this course, and how you would demonstrate that knowledge to others.

DELIVERABLES,GUIDANCE,&GRADING RUBRIC

Students will be graded on 3 components of the Final Project: Storyline, Cleaning and exploratory analysis,and Presentation. More detail on each component is available below:

1. Storyline:   A bullet pointed overview of your work submitted in word or google doc format.

·     Identify problem statement, question, or goal of the analysis

·     Share context on the problem or question via previous findings, research, etc.

·     Identify your target audience and what they care about

·     Describe the dataset(s) you worked with and their source(s)

·     Describe the presence [if any] of nullvalues and how you handled them

·     Describe your cleaning methods

·     Provide a brief overview of analysis methods

o  This can be mentioned through the presentation of your insights

·     Describe your assumptions

·     Describe your findings

·      Suggest next steps

2. Cleaning and analysis:   A cleaned spreadsheet or Tableau workbook of data (and visualizations).

·     Excel file or Tableau workbook should be organized in a well-structured,easy to access and follow way e.g. the file should have  at least:

o   Data overview tab with:

■  Statistical analysis

■   Graphs

·      Pivot tables [can be in their own tabs as well-but well labeled]

■  Sorted lists

o   Analysis tab,

o   Clean Data tab, and

o  Raw Data tab

●  Make  sure  to...

o  Deal with missing values

·     Whenever faced with missing values,you can replace them with new values    ("impute"new values)such as the mean or median of that column or remove the rows containing missing values.

·     Find and evaluate the rows containing missing values.

·     Use Excel to either remove or impute missing values.

·     Be prepared to defend your reasoning for choosing one option over the other.

·     IMPORTANT!Keep a record of choices you make when cleaning or transforming data,and make sure to briefly mention this in your presentation.

o  Clean  the  data

Look for any outliers or incorrectly recorded data.

·     For outliers,determine  if it  is better to remove them or include them in your analysis.

■  Correct any data formatting issues.Do columns need to be joined or split?

·     Apply any other normalization or cleaning techniques needed.

o  Explore  the  data

·     The goal is to understand the data well enough to begin to see distinct segments within   it.

o Create new variables (AS NEEDED)

·     Create new variables aimed at distinguishing the distinct segments within your data.

o Summarize each data segment

"     Just as people have distinct personalities,your data segments should also have distinct characteristics and attributes.

·     Use Excel's  statistical,aggregations  functions,pivots  tables,plots,graphs,and any other methods to summarize and describe your data segments.

o  Organize  your  insights

■ Organize your insights so that you can quickly navigate them.

·     You might want to put all of your newly created tables and graphs on a separate worksheet in your workbook.

·     Your tables and graphs should have the appropriate titles and labels.They don't need to be absolutely finalized,but they should make sense to someone who isn't familiar with your data.Make sure to include titles,axis labels,column names,and row names where appropriate.

3.Final  presentation: Submitted as  part of Final Project'package'.

·Create a  10-minute  presentation exported to  PDF that delivers the  most important insights to your target audience.

·     Point out the most important insights from your data segments

o People's time is valuable;make the most of it by gearing your presentation towards your audience

o Focus on the most important insights and their implications,but make sure to include the  following,at  least  briefly.

■ Think about the original question you were trying to answer.

·     With  that  in  mind,identify the insights most important to answering that question.

·     For  example, if  my  original  goal  was  to  study  my  customers'purchase behavior.  to  better  market  to  them, I  might  focus  on  the  attributes  of  those  that  purchase  often  vs.those  that  don't.

■  Suggest next steps

·      Include appropriate tables, charts, graphs, and aggregations to support your insights.

·      The presentation should contain an appropriate level of  technical depth. You don't want to give a step by step recounting of your process, but mentioning high level concepts is important

·      Make sure to be familiar with all aspects of your analysis to be ready for

questions. Though you might not spend a lot of time talking about all the

intricacies of the data, it's  important to  have them in mind if someone asks a question.

GROUP WORK GUIDELINES

Group Work is OPTIONAL. Students  may work in groups of no more than 3 individuals. Students may complete their final projects  completely on their own as well.

The following points provide guidance for submissions for those working in groups:

o   Every individual's name that is part of the group must be on each deliverable to note group submission.

o  To  demonstrate everyone's sign-off on each  final deliverable and to ease grading,everyone  must individually upload their group products via the class Course Works site.