QBUS6860 – Group Project
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QBUS6860 – Group Project:
Value: 45%
Due Date: 4pm Tuesday 1 November 2022
Rationale
This assignment has been designed to help students develop data analytics, visualisation, valuable communication and collaboration skills, and to allow students to practice state of the art approaches that can be used in storytelling based on Visual Data Analytics (VDA) on real world datasets.
Key Admin Information
1. Required submissions:
a. ONE written report (word or pdf format, through Canvas – Group Project- Report Submission) of no more than 15 pages (excluding cover page(s) and appendices) in single line spacing with 12-point Times New Roman (or Calibri) fonts : This is the full report including all graphs and any additional materials or outputs of your analysis etc. The report should be in a typical research paper format and include the following sections ‘Introduction, Question Description, Analysis Methods/Process, Results Presentation/Analysis, Instruction on how to use your visualisation dashboard, Summary/Conclusion, and References’, plus Appendix if any.
b. A Full Set of Python “.py” or Jupyter Notebook “ipynb” files (through Canvas- Group Project - Upload Your Program Code Files) plus any datasets of your own. Important: If you made significant changes to the provided data files (e.g. merged several files, mined additional data, etc.), you must also upload your datasets along with your program files so that we can check your calculations for correctness! This is to make sure your code/program can be verified by markers.
2. The late penalty for the assignment is 5% of the assigned mark per day, starting after 4pm on the due date Tuesday 1 November 2022. Tuesday 8 November 2022, 4:00 pm is the closing date. Any submission later than the closing time/date will NOT be accepted for marking.
3. Numbers with decimals should be reported to the Two-decimal point in the report.
4. If you wish to include additional materials, you can do so by creating an appendix. There is no page limit for the appendix. Keep in mind that making good use of your audience’s time is an essential business skill. Every sentence, table and figure have to count. Extraneous and/or wrong material will potentially affect your mark.
5. Anonymous marking: As the anonymous marking policy of the University, please only include student ID in the submitted report, and do NOT include your name. The file name of your report should follow the following format QBUS6860_2022S2_GroupXXX.pdf (or .docx). Replace "XXX" with your group ID (for example, group 1 with 001, group 13 with 013, group 123 with 123). A cover page will be provided for your convenience.
6. Presentation of the assignment is part of the assessment. Markers will deduct marks for poor quality writing or lack of clarity in presentation.
7. For Turnitin to check your code, please copy and paste your codes into Appendix. Code should be formatted by equal width fonts such as Courier New or Consola.
If your programs are in py file, simply copy and paste into the report Appendix. If you are using Jupyter Notebook, please follow InstructionPY to convert it to “py” files first then copy the created py files into Appendix of the report.
Warning: Your submission time will be the time of the last submission of the above two components (the report and the code) to Canvas. For example, if any one of two components is submitted later than due time/day, the entire submission of your project will be regarded as a late submission and will be subject to a late penalty accordingly. In the case, if you want to re-submit any missing items/components after the official due date has passed, you will receive the late penalty.
Key Rules
• Carefully read the requirements for the project.
• Please follow any further instructions announced on Canvas and/or ED. It is your responsibility to strictly follow all the instruction to avoid any potential loss of marks.
• You MUST use Python to produce any visualisations and dashboard(s) that you have. You must submit your Python code with your processed data for verification.
• Reproducibility is fundamental in data analysis, so that you make sure you suggest the right Python py file or Jupyter Notebook ipynb files that generate the results in your report. Markers will run your program for checking.
• The University of Sydney takes plagiarism very seriously. Please be warned that plagiarism between individuals/groups is always obvious to the markers and can be easily detected by Turnitin.
• Not submitting your code will lead to a loss of up to 50% of the awarded project marks.
• Failure to read information and follow instructions may lead to a loss of marks. Furthermore, note that it is your responsibility to be informed of the University of
Sydney and Business School rules and guidelines, and follow them, see
https://canvas.sydney.edu.au/courses/9993/pages/submitting-assignments
• Referencing: Business School recommends APA Referencing System. (You may find the details at: https://libguides.library.usyd.edu.au/citation/apa7)
• Your project will be deemed as the final exam for this unit, thus the marks will only be available after the University office grade release day as all the results are subject to the university approval procedure. Feedback may be provided on the marked submission as requested after the release day.
Background
COVID-19 is still an ongoing worldwide pandemic of the coronavirus disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). In combating the pandemic, countries around the world have been taking different measures, strategies and policies. Collecting daily data about COVID-19 is an important part of actions around the world. The data is useful in making decisions on public policies by all types of agencies around world. Different organisations have also collected data from the governments around the world in order to better monitor the pandemic development. For example, Our World in Data maintains the full set of data https://ourworldindata.org/. Also, you can see a useful dashboard, provided by the John Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Centre, visualising the pandemic spreadhttps://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.htmlwhich uses modern data visualisation to help monitor the dynamics of the pandemic development.
Project Description and Requirement
The data maintained by Our World in Data organisation can be fully downloaded from https://github.com/owid/covid-19-data/tree/master/public/data. A dataset containing information up to 30 June 2022 can be downloaded from our unit Canvas site.
This project is designed for you to practice your skills across the entire Visual Data Analytics (VDA) process including storytelling. You have sufficient flexibility to conduct your research.
The goal is, but not limited to, to describe the current status of the pandemic around the world, government actions/policies, the effectiveness of the action in treatment and prevention etc through the following steps:
1. Acquire data fromhttps://github.com/owid/covid-19- data/tree/master/public/data. Note: You may use the data on Canvas site. When this project starts, the newly updated data is also available (daily updating). You are encouraged to use the most up-to-date data in your project, but this is NOT a must.
2. Explore the data (both the data provided for you and/or the updated data you may gather) to find a story and ask questions. A lot of questions can be asked: For example, (i) Why do different countries experience vastly different death rates (i.e. the number of fatalities to the number of those infected by the virus: For example, as at 23 September 2020, at the bottom-end of death rates we have Israel with 0.66%, Norway with 2.05% of deaths, Brazil with 3.01%, Belgium with 9.11%, UK with 10.36%, and Italy with 11.88%, and Australia with 3.17%). (ii) What has happened in Australia after the national vaccination rate achieves 93% and possible reasons according to your research? (iii) Do different countries experience different infection rates, how and why? These are just some example questions. You do not need follow these sample question(s). A more interesting question from your own team is highly welcomed.
3. Assess and explain the fitness of the data for answering your question(s). Create the necessary visualisation(s) that tell the story about the pandemic development around your question(s). These visualisations should be used for the purpose of revealing patterns/your discovered insights and presenting the story you are telling underpinned by your solid data analysis.
4. Build a data visualisation “dashboard” which provides important information for the audience to explore answers to your question(s). Your design may be based on the visualization(s) in the above subtask 3 with a creative and user-friendly layout. This will require a great effort.
5. Carefully explain your conclusions: what insight does your analysis bring?
Resources
1. You may borrow some ideas from previous research e. g. at:
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
2. Datasets that we have already obtained are owid-covid-data.csv. You may download the most up-to-date dataset. In this case, please include your new dataset along with your code in your submission to Canvas.
3. Data dictionary and value formats are explained in owid-covid-codebook.csv.
Suggestions (You may Consider):
We recommend you treat this group assignment as a research project. This means you will present your final project in the format of a typical research paper/report. You can look at other research papers to learn about the style of writing and presentation they use and about what is expected of a research paper/report.
For your convenience and to clarify our expectations, we have provided two sample reports from 2021S2 and 2022S1 QBUS6860. Although the topics of research in these sample reports are different from the project topic you are assigned this semester, they serve as good examples that you can follow.
Your report should contain the following information:
(a) A title and an abstract
(b) Background story (telling your audience or readers what it is about)
(c) Your question to be answered or your hypothesis to be verified in the project and its meaning and importance (this is about your motivation and why you have chosen this topic).
(d) Data description (what facts you rely on and their formats, or how you change the data for your purpose.)
(e) Your methodology (how did you get the answers/insights/conclusions) and toolsets etc.
(f) Results (could be presented visually with explanation) and explanation to your
dashboard
(g) Your insights about the pandemic and its future development
(h) What can be improved further and provide suggestions, if any
(i) References
2022-10-24