Term project.

The project can be more-or-less anything related to the course. If you have dissertation or RA projects that involve sampling you are positively encouraged to use them. 

 Possibilities include

• A review of some area we didn't cover enough in class.
• Design of a survey 
• Data analysis of a complex survey sample (and the impact of the design on the analysis)
• A simulation study or mathematical investigation of some question.
• Teaching materials for explaining some important or subtle issue
• Comparison of graphical approaches to presenting or exploring data 

The projects will be presented in poster sessions during class time on March 10 and/or 12, depending on what sort of room I can get for them.   I will invite Stat, Biostat and CSSS faculty and students.  You can also hand in a (limited) amount of supplemental material that doesn't fit on the poster, if you like.  

There is no need to get a fancy printed poster (unless you want to practice fancy printed poster design, a useful skill), but it is important to design the poster so that it can be read and understood by your target audience.

The project will be 40% of the grade for the class, with 30% homework and 30% midterm exam.

Specific suggestions:

Reviews

• Some topic in network sampling
• Line/transect/quadrat sampling
• Internet sampling: threat or menace?
• Small-area estimation
• What survey techniques are used (and whether they are used appropriately) in some field of application.
• What do Bayesians do about complex samples?

Simulation or analytic studies

• Sequential stratification (as suggested in class)
• Efficient designs for two-phase sampling
• Impact of omitting weights from regression models
• Two-phase sampling for handling imputed genes in whole-genome association studies

For data analyses or designs, if you talk to me about what area you are interested in, we can try to find suitable data.