6N:216 Data and Decisions
Term Paper Project Template
For this project, your group must complete a quantitative analysis of the topic:
Global Warming
This topic is at the center of a heated debate, with opinions based on personal experience, political leaning, religious beliefs, and/or philosophical and moral values. Your job is to try to be impartial with respect to these opinions (although it is admittedly difficult not to have your own!), and to identify a well-posed question or issue related to this topic, which can be analyzed quantitatively on the basis of available data, applying the statistical and regression techniques that you have learned in class.
Issues and sources
Here are some sample questions that you might consider for this topic:
· What is the evidence for and against global warming?
· How do existing data compare to predictions generated by General Circulation Models (GCM’s) of the global climate?
A lot of information is publicly available on the Web on these and other questions, including objective studies based on data as well as many “opinionated” sources and studies. Beware of many sites containing information portrayed as “scientific evidence” in support of a hypothesis; the arguments presented may be tainted with either unreliable data, ill-posed questions, unverifiable conjectures, flawed analysis, or biased interpretation. Sometimes a site might contain useful, reliable information or data along with biased opinions. To help you get started in your research, here are a few pointers to sites that you may find useful, grouped into different categories according to the instructor’s perception. Browse through these sources to get a feel of the data and information available and the pitfalls to avoid. With this caveat, you are also welcome to seek additional sources.
· Sites with objective information and reliable data
o http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/ncdc.html
o INSERT URL HERE
· Sites on one side of the issue
o http://www.ipcc.ch/
o http://www.worldwatch.org/
o http://www.whrc.org/globalwarming/warmingearth.htm
o
· Sites on the opposite side of the issue
o http://www.cato.org
o http://www.skepticism.net/faq/environment/global_warming/
o http://www.heartland.org/studies/ieguide.htm
· Sites with additional useful information and links
o http://www.giss.nasa.gov/
o http://www.co2science.org/
o http://www.clearlight.com/~mhieb/WVFossils/ice_ages.html
After an initial research period, you will select a specific issue or topic and state it as a question or hypothesis that can be answered or confirmed/rejected with some level of confidence using appropriate statistical or regression methodologies. Pick a hypothesis for which data is available to support your study and which is interesting enough that the answer is not obvious or trivial.
What to turn in
Your paper should be approximately 8-10 pages long (12 point font, single space, at least 1 inch margins) including title and author information, text, figures, tables, legends, and references. It can be shorter than 8 pages but not longer than 10. The paper should at least accomplish the following goals:
· Introduce and motivate the topic and the particular issue you want to analyze (also give background information about other studies on this issue and their results)
· Explain the source, type, format, age, and reliability of your data
· Describe your methodology and why it is an appropriate approach (this largely depends on the hypothesis you are testing and on the data available)
· Report on the results of your analysis in a clear, concise way (use figures and tables when appropriate)
· Discuss your results and their implications
The paper will be graded on the accomplishments of the above goals, appropriateness of the data and methodology, soundness of the analysis, and the style and clarity of the writing (including grammar, spelling, and punctuation).
Academic integrity
The principles of academic honesty will be vigorously enforced on this project, according to the Tippie MBA Honor Code and the UI Policy on Academic Misconduct.
The paper you turn in and all the data analysis you report must be the work of your team members exclusively. No collaborations or discussions with other students or other people are allowed. All non-trivial help from other people (including the instructor) must be described and acknowledged in your paper. All results presented in your paper, including charts, tables, printouts, and text, must be genuine and not misleading. The source of your initial data must be acknowledged in detail.
Any type or amount of plagiarism is a very serious violation. You may not steal phrases, sentences, paragraphs, or figures from books, published or unpublished papers, Web pages, or any other source. If you quote anything authored by anyone else, you must indicate very clearly that it is a quotation, and you must provide a precise citation immediately before or after the borrowed text or figure. Your paper must include a bibliography with references to all your sources, whether in print or from the Web.
Each person listed as an author of a project must take full responsibility for the entire project and paper. The members of a team should act as editors for paper sections written by each other. All team members should agree with and be willing to defend the entire text of the paper.
Your submission of work to be graded in this class implies acknowledgement of this policy. If you need clarification or have any questions, please do not hesitate to see the instructor.