ETC5513: Collaborative and Reproducible Practices

Assignment 2

Author

Michael Lydeamore

Published

21 May 2024

🎯 Objectives

  • Working on a reproducible Rstudio project
  • Produce a pdf report using the template discuss in Week 7 or Week 8.
  • Practice markdown syntax
  • Practice R coding
  • Use R chunk options to customize your report template
  • Create tables, add table captions and refer to them in the report text as described in Week 4
  • Create simple figures to visualize the data, add figure captions and refer to the figures in the report text as you learned in Week 4
  • Demonstrate that you are able to work in groups to clone a GitHub repository locally and synchronize the changes between your local and remote repositories while using individual branches.
  • Show that you can create and merge branches as well as resolve conflicts.
  • Show that you can create meaningful Git commits so that the changes and the history of the project can be recorded and tracked.
Important

This is an individual and group assignment.

The printed final PDF report cannot exceed 16 pages for teams of four or 20 pages for teams of five (not including appendix pages). Additionally, you cannot use a dataset that has been previously used for other assignments or in other units this year or previous years.

You cannot use a dataset that has been used for another assignment.

Part A

As a group, you need to agree on a topic with several subtopics for each individual in the team and select a dataset or several datasets for the assignment.

Each team member should work on their own branch named after their student username and produce a report with the following for their assigned subtopic:

  • Title and authors (1 mark)
  • Table of contents: Defining using adequate YAML syntax (1 mark)
  • Executive summary: Maximum of 4 sentences (3 marks)
  • Introduction: Maximum 10 sentences (5 marks)
  • The body of the report should contain the following sections:
    • Methodology: Maximum 300 words (5 marks).
      • Should include a figure and a table and those must be referenced in the text and have adequate captions (5 marks).
    • Results: Maximum 200 words (3 marks). Should include either a figure or a table.
    • Discussion, conclusion and recommendations
    • Reference section: Include at least 1 reference. (1 mark)

Part B

As a team, you need to:

  1. Merge the branches: Start by merging all the branches into the main branch. You will need to get organized and do this one by one so that you can resolve the conflicts that will appear.
  2. Resolve conflicts: Since you will be working on the same sections, conflicts may arise when the same lines of code are modified in different branches. To resolve conflicts, edit the affected files and choose which version to keep. Once you have resolved the conflicts, commit the changes.
  3. Make sure that the report knits into a pdf without errors each time you do a merge. If errors arise please solve them.
  4. Review and Revise: Carefully review the final report to ensure that it meets all the requirements of a cohesive report and is free of errors. Make any necessary revisions and edits before submitting the report. For this, you will all probably need to work on the main branch. Please ensure that any changes made are in terms of the requirements and in a coordinated fashion to avoid any problems.

The final business hospital must look professional, coherent and connected.

Students who do not participate in Part B will receive a grade of 0 for the assignment.

Teams will not be penalised if individual students do not contribute to to the work on their respective branches.

Marking Rubric

In addition to the points for each section as described above, you will be graded on your:

  • Report template (5 points). The default Quarto template will be granted 1 point. More sophisticated templates will add more points into this component, up to 5. Remember, styling that takes away from the report is not beneficial.
  • Issues with spelling and grammar (up to -5pts)
  • R code style (5 points)
  • Report quality: Sections in the report are connected and aligned with the research question in a coherent way (6 points).
  • Messages in commits are clear and informative (5 points)
  • Work on individual branches of the git repository (10 points)
  • Work on the main branch of the git repository (10 points)
  • Git tree structure (5 points)

Maximum grade: 70 points.

The usage of AI

You may use Generative AI (such as ChatGPT) to correct your English or to help with your R code (for example to find bugs or ask for enhancements to your existing code). However, if you use ChatGPT you must declare it by adding a section in your Quarto report called Appendix, and display screenshots of your ChatGPT queries and interactions related to this assignment.

You cannot use ChatGPT to generate content for this assignment from scratch, including code.

Monash University supports the responsible and ethical use of generative AI. For more info please refer to Monash Policy and practise guidance around acceptable and responsible use of AI technologies.

Tip

Remember you can be better than ChatGPT. If you just use ChatGPT to create content for you, where is your value and why are your skills special?

Assignment Submission

The report must be rendered to PDF. Code outputs do not need to be visible - you are creating a clean business report, so only include them in they are adding to your narrative.

Important

The printed final PDF report cannot exceed 16 pages for teams of four or 20 pages for teams of five (not including appendix pages)

You do not need to upload anything to Moodle. All marking will occur directly from your GitHub repositories.

Plagiarism

Monash University is committed to honesty and academic integrity. There are serious consequences for plagiarism and collusion. If plagiarism and/or collusion is detected further actions will be taken according to Monash University policy and procedures. More info here:

https://www.monash.edu/students/admin/policies/academic-integrity

You cannot re-use assignments that have been submitted or used in other units.