NIT6130 Introduction to Research
Assignment 4 – Experiment Design & Result Analysis
Semester 2, 2017
Due Date: 11:59pm, Friday, Week 12
Submission Requirement: submit online via a link in Assessment on VU Collaborate
Value: 25% of semester assessment
Objective:
The purpose of this assignment is to help students getting familiar with the process of design and implement experiments for their research projects. Students will review, analyse, design, implement experiments to evaluate the proposed methodology in previous assignment, and report experimental results and findings as well.
Tasks:
1. Collect your data for experiment
a. Identify the available data sources for collection.
b. Select the most appropriate data source(s) and start data collection. You are asked to record the data sources that you have found, brief description of the available data using the following sample table:
Data
Source
Name Source
Organization Data
Description Data File
Format URL (if available online) Charge Fee Target data source
Data 1 Sport Centre,
VU Exercise training record txt http://xxxxxxx Free Yes
Data 2 … … … … $1000 No
c. Store the collected data in appropriate file format. You need to save the collected raw data, and keep a copy at all times.
i. Create a folder called “raw data” to store the collected raw data ii. Record your data collection using the following sample table:
Data
Source
Name Date of
Collection Saved File Location Saved
File
Name Saved File Format No. of Data Records
Data 1 15/3/2016 //raw data/ xxxx.txt txt 2000
Data 3 … … … …
2. Design and implement experiments
a. Adopt data pre-processing. Not all the collected raw data are available as direct input of your methodology.
b. Feature selection or dimension reduction. You may need to select some of data features or data records from the entire data collection, not to use all the collected data. In other case, you may need to reduce the dimensionality of the collected data to simplify the data processing in the later stages. You need to save the result data set into a new file. You are asked to record these works using the following sample table.
Date Data
Source
Name Purpose of Preprocessi ng Preprocessi ng
Method No.
Original
Data
Records No. No.
Result Original
Data Features
Records No.
Result Featur
s New
Data e File
Name
20/3/2
016 Data 1 Clean the missing data Pre-fill the missing values 2000 2000 10 10 Data1_f
ull.txt
22/3/2
016 Data 1 Feature Selection xxxxxx 2000 2000 10 6 Data1_6 features
.txt
… Data 3 … … … …
c. Design your experiment based on the proposed methodology. The main purpose of experiments is to prove that your methodology can provide expected outcomes. You can follow the experiments that you have read from literatures or any other ways that is suitable for your case. Your experiments procedure need to be detailed recorded, including instruction steps, input data, expected output, potential problems and other related issues. When state the procedure of experiment, you can use extra table, figure, chart, diagram to provide better description.
Date Experiment Purpose of Experiment Description of
Procedure Input Data Expected Output Result File
Name
26/3/
2016 Experiment 1 Evaluate Method 1 … … … Output1.txt
d. To implement your experiment, normally you need to use software/tools or write your own program. Record your experiment results for each run as the references of the following analysis task.
3. Result analysis and summary
a. What are the expected results that you want to obtained from the experiment? You need to have a rough idea of what you may have in advance; you cannot wait until the experiment is done.
b. Plan your result analysis by thinking of what result you may have first. Write a summary of why you expected to have that results, how they can be linked to your research problems.
4. Write up your experiment and result analysis chapter.
a. Provide an outline of your experiment and result analysis chapter, including up to four levels of subsections. Only need to list the chapter titles (level 1), section titles (level 2), subsection titles (level 3), and sub-subsection titles (level 4).
Marking criteria
Assessment Criteria: Mark
Data Collection
• Data source list
• Data collection record
2
3
Experiment Design and Implementation
• Data pre-processing
• Feature selection or dimension reduction
• Experiment design
• Experiment implementation records
2
3
3
2
Experiment Result Analysis & Summary
• The expected results
• Summarize your expected results to answer research problems
2
3
Outline of Experiment and Result Analysis Chapter 5
Total 25