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Second Biennial Undergraduate Statistics Project Competition (USPROC)

(Click here to see the results of the USPROC 2007 Competition.)

The CAUSE (Consortium for the Advancement of Undergraduate Statistics Education - www.causeweb.org) announces its second biennial undergraduate statistics project competition (USPROC). The purpose of USPROC is to encourage the development of data analysis skills, to enhance presentation skills, and to recognize outstanding work by undergraduate statistics students.

The top four projects will earn monetary awards of $750 for first place, $500 for second place, $250 for third place and $100 for fourth place. The next four projects will receive honorable mention.

The first (or any other designated) author and one instructor sponsor of each of the top four projects will be invited to present their posters at the 2009 United States Conference on Teaching Statistics (USCOTS). The lodging and registration fee for the student presenters will be supported. The maximum support of transportation expenses for the student presenter is $500 (or economy class airfare, whichever is smaller) for each team.

The registration fee for the instructor sponsor will be supported. If the instructor sponsor also makes a presentation at the USCOTS, the lodging will also be covered.

Who may participate?

  1. The competition is open to any undergraduate student globally.
  2. Students may work individually or in groups of up to 3 persons. All participants must be undergraduate students in the spring of 2009.
  3. Each student can be the author or a co-author of only one project submitted for the competition. Each project must have at least one instructor sponsor. The advising from the instructor(s) should be similar to the advice given to students in their class projects. The instructor sponsor(s) should remind students to follow the guidelines and meet the deadline.

Project scope:

  1. Students may choose any topic on which to conduct their study. For example, the project may be a spin-off from a course project, such as from a capstone course. The originality and importance of the project will be judged.
  2. The project must involve statistical applications using real data. Students may collect their own data or use existing data. The design of the study, the process of data collection and data manipulation will be judged.
  3. Students are encouraged to apply any data analysis techniques that are appropriate. The appropriateness and the creativity of the analysis will be judged.

Awards:

There will be a first, second, third and fourth place, along with four honorable mentions.

Prizes: The top four winners will receive the following cash prizes:

  • 1st place : $750
  • 2nd place : $500
  • 3rd place : $250
  • 4th place : $100

One author (the first author or a designated author) and one instructor sponsor of each of the top four winning projects will be invited to present their winning project at the 2009 United States Conference on Teaching Statistics (USCOTS). The lodging and registration fee for the student presenters will be covered. The maximum support of transportation expenses per student presenter is $500 or economy class airfare, whichever is smaller.

The registration fee for the instructor sponsor will be covered. If the instructor also makes a presentation at USCOTS, the lodging will be covered.

In the case where a winning project has more than one author or/and more than one instructor sponsor, only one of the authors and one of the instructors will be supported. The announcement of the ranks 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th, and the presentation of the awards to the top four winners will take place at the USCOTS.

The winning projects will be featured in the September 2009 issue of STATS magazine, the official ASA magazine for student research publications.

Project Submission Period:

May 5th, 2008 to January 26th, 2009

Students conducting their projects in Spring of 2008 are encouraged to submit their projects as early as May 2008.

Announcement of winners:

March 7th, 2009 (First Friday in March)

Guidelines for submission:

The project must be submitted through email as an attachment to usproc@cmich.edu. Please enter 'Second Biennial Undergraduate Project Competition' in the Subject: line of your e-mail. Materials to be submitted include:

  1. The cover page with the check list of materials submitted. This cover page is provided at the end of this guideline, and is also available for download (DOWNLOAD THE COVER PAGE).
  2. A report in Microsoft Word® document of no more than 10 pages, including abstract, tables, figures, references, and appendix (if any). This report should consist of all essential materials addressing all the evaluation criteria. This will be the main document to be evaluated. The format for the report is given below:
    1. The font size, except the title, should be 12 points in Times New Roman font with single space.
    2. At least one space is required to separate each section.
    3. The title is centered using 14 point font size.
    4. Abstract of less than 300 words follows the title.
    5. There must be NO mention of students' names, university affiliation, or anything else linking the 10 pages of the paper to a specific person or a school. The identification information should be provided on the cover page.

  3. A presentation using Microsoft PowerPoint® containing no more than 16 slides. This is similar to an executive summary of your study and findings. It will be evaluated for the 'Presentation' criterion. No names, university affiliation or any information linking to the authors is allowed on the power point slides.

    The format of the PowerPoint slides is given below:

    The font size of the PowerPoint slides should allow for the project to be adequately viewed if it were to be printed off and put on a standard 3-panel science-fair free-standing poster board. The title of the presentation should be no less than a 36 point font. Any subtitles should be no less than a 24 point font and any other text should be no less than a 20 point font.

NOTE: The judges may want to verify the results in any project. The Organizing Committee may request the data set(s) used in the project if requested by the judges. CAUSE reserves the right to use the projects or data for promoting undergraduate statistics education. Any promotional material will not be used for commercial purposes. If CAUSE uses the projects or data, the project's author(s) and the data sources will be acknowledged.

The project will be judged based on the following criteria* with the weight in parentheses:

  1. Appropriateness and correctness of data collection (such as design of the study, methods for collecting data, data cleansing and manipulations, etc.) (20%)
  2. Appropriateness and correctness of data analysis methods (both descriptive and inferential) (30%)
  3. Appropriateness and correctness of conclusions and discussion (20%)
  4. Overall clarity and presentation, including the presentations in the word document and the power point slides (15%)
  5. The originality and importance of the project and creative analysis (15%)

* All essential materials addressing these criteria must be in the Word document.

Contact information:

Carl Lee
Department of Mathematics
Central Michigan University
Mt. Pleasant, MI 48859
Phone: (989) 774-3555

Questions regarding to the competition: Email: carl.lee@cmich.edu

Email address for project submission: USPROC@CMICH.EDU

Organizing Committee:

Felix Famoye, Central Michigan University
John Holcomb, Cleveland State University
Carl Lee (Chair), Central Michigan University
Chris Malone, Winona State University
Nathan Tintle, Hope College
Jeff Witmer, Oberlin College