Prof. Judith Fan

Fall 2026

Project

By the end of this course, you will have completed an original research project! You will start from a quantitative claim about people — one you don’t quite believe, or one you are simply curious to check — find or collect real data that can speak to it, explore the data to discover patterns, and fit statistical models that describe those patterns. You’ll present what you found to your classmates at the course-wide project showcase.

Week 3: Milestone 2: Looking for patterns

This week you’ll start looking at your data. Every student makes an individual submission again, and it is due on Gradescope by Sunday, October 11th at 11:59PM. For Milestone 2, you will take the claim and the dataset from Milestone 1, make a histogram of one column yourself (no AI for that one), then ask an AI for the same histogram in plain words and compare the two. Then you’ll decide which columns could test your claim, have the AI make a plot of them, and write down what you see. This is the last milestone you do on your own: groups of three form in section next week.

  • Milestone 2 handout (PDF): the steps, an example, and how it is graded. You will get a paper copy in section.
  • M2-looking-for-patterns.Rmd: the file you fill in for this milestone. Download it into the milestones/ folder of your project, next to your M1 file. There is no new project folder to download; keep working in the one you made for Milestone 1.

Submit the .Rmd and the PDF it knits to (the Gradescope link is on Canvas). Please bring your laptop to section. Near the end of section, everyone will share the claim or topic they are working on, so start thinking about who you would like to work with.

Week 2: Milestone 1: Finding a claim and working in a project folder

You’ll be getting started on your final project this week. Every student will be making an individual submission, and it is due on Gradescope by Sunday, October 4th at 11:59PM. For Milestone 1, you will be setting up your project folder and finding a quantitative claim in the news, then tracking down a dataset you could analyze to check that claim against. You will learn how to load that dataset into an R Markdown notebook. You can use any AI tool you wish to help you accomplish these tasks.

  • Milestone 1 handout (PDF): the steps, a worked example, and how it is graded. You will get a paper copy in section.
  • Project template (zip): download it, unzip it into your psych10 folder, and rename the folder project-<your SUNet ID>. Inside are hello.Rmd, which you knit first to check that everything works, and milestones/M1-claim-and-setup.Rmd, the file you fill in for this milestone.

Submit the .Rmd and the PDF it knits to (the Gradescope link is on Canvas). Please bring your laptop, your claim, and the dataset you found to section this week, so your TA can help you get it loaded. Groups of three form in section next week, around related claims.

Week 1: Install Clinic

Your first discussion section is an R/RStudio install clinic where we will get R, RStudio, and the course packages running on your laptop, with your TA right there to help. Please bring a charged laptop! It will save time if you download the R and RStudio installers before section (the links are in the instructions).

This is not a numbered project milestone, so there is nothing to submit on Canvas. We WILL collect the first sheet of the instructions (pages 1-2) at the end of section, because that is how we track attendance that day. Pages 3-4 are yours to keep. It is preferred if you attend your scheduled discussion section, but you should feel free to attend any discussion section this week.

Final Project Showcase

The showcase takes place during the scheduled final exam time for this course: Wednesday, December 9, 3:30-6:30pm. Attendance is required for every group member. Room assignments will be announced in class and over Slack in advance.