gis
You will need to complete at least two Data Analysis Vignettes. These are meant to be simple 2-5 page summaries, that can be quickly written in an hour or so, to help document methods, ideas and analyses you are exploring in your projects. They are not meant to be an onerous burden, but instead are intended to encourage you to articulate your ideas and findings in a very exploratory fashion. They will help you get more specific feedback out of the instructor(s) and/or your peers. When done right, they may also become the building blocks of your poster and manuscript as you move forward. You need to do at least two to track your progress, but you are welcome to do more for the various components of your project.
Please include the following components:
Please use this
DataAnalysisVignetteTemplate.docx
as a template (feel free to reformat as you see fit).
Instructions for completing the proposal (by section) are in the template (and the same text is provided below):
Question / Problem
In as little as 1-2 sentences, but no more then 1-2 paragraphs, describe the question or problem that this particular research vignette is posing and seeking to address.
Idea / Hypothesis
Very concisely articulate your idea for how to address this problem, that you are going to illustrate with this Vignette.
Methods
Provide enough detail on the methods you undertook to analyze your problem/question and test your idea/hypothesis as is necessary such that you could reproduce the results at a later date. You don’t need to necessarily provide as much detail as you would in the methods section of a manuscript. However, you need to provide enough of a description so that it is clear what you did to both yourself and your Vignette audience (i.e. teacher, committee, lab peers, etc.).
Preliminary Results
Show as many figures as is necessary to illustrate the results. Include captions and a few sentences to few paragraphs of text for each to explain the results.
Preliminary Interpretations
Without feeling an obligation to robustly back everything up with lots of citations, just highlight your main interpretations from doing this work. What does it tell you? What does it not tell you? Did it work? Feel free to include conjecture that is helpful for exploring new ideas. This is an opportunity for you to articulate your preliminary findings and get feedback from your supervisor and/or committee on some work.
Future Work & Questions
Based on this vignette, and your assessment of whether or not it worked, what is next? Is this a dead end (to be relegated to a dusty shelf or an appendix and not explored in more detail? Is this an analysis that could be improved and shows enough promise that it warrants doing? Is this a vignette that tells such a compelling story that it should absolutely be followed up and extended to the rest of your data? Does this highlight any future data acquisition needs, literature you need to explore, techniques you need to experiment with, additional analyses you want to play with, or training that you need to go further? Are there any questions that this analysis raises that you want to pose?
References
If you cited any literature, include it here. USE ENDNOTE!