Pet project

What is a silly/quirky/fun thing in your own life or environment that you could datafy and analyze?

Data mining gives you a powerful toolbox, and I want to give you a chance to use it in something that is of interest to you.

Hence, I invite you to do a totally optional “pet project” during the trimester. It should be something that has some personal connection to you. This is neither about downloading an existing dataset and working with it, nor about participating in a canned data science competition.

Instead, this is about creating a dataset about something that is connected to you, as an individual, and analyzing this dataset. It can be something silly or quirky.

Think of a fun pet project worthy of a data scientist.

Make it fun and wholesome.

What to deliver

A two-page report including:

• Title: should be descriptive and fun
• Goals: what are your motivations and objectives, and how is this connected to you as an individual.
• Methods: how you created and processed your data.
• Results: what did you observe.
• Conclusions: a closing paragraph with your learnings and thoughts, and what does it mean to you personally.
• Generative AI Statement: a paragraph in which you indicate whether you used Generative AI to write your report, and how, specifically.
• A link to a repository containing your code and data
  • It should be professional, understandable, and reproducible.
  • This repository may be private or public, as you prefer.
  • If you use a private repo on GitHub, share it with GitHub user chatox.
  • If you use a private repo elsewhere, share it with the e-mail of the instructor.

Your project belongs to you. I will not distribute it.

How it will be evaluated

The pet project is essentially for you to enjoy using the tools you have learned to do something fun.

However, I will also +0.5 your final practice grade if your pet project is:

• interesting or fun,
• non-trivial, and
• perfectly executed.

Please note that the following will lead to a no-evaluation:

• Your project has nothing to do with you.
• Your report does not look as if it was written by you. This is about you, I want to read your writing.
• Your project captures other people’s personal data without their consent.