Objectives

  • Perform a numerical and graphical data exploration

This assignment is more free-form than the others you’ve seen so far. It will be worthwhile to invest time reading and discussing the data description file.

Helpful Functions

rbind()

There are data files for multiple years, a new function that may be useful for combining all the years is rbind().

subset()

These are very rich datasets… You will need to practice the art of subsetting using `subset().

Data

You’ll use data from the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON).

You can find the data files on the main course GitHub page.

Instructions:

Let’s explore some National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) data!

Background

NEON collects a plethora of super interesting ecological data throughout North America, so we will just explore a tiny bit of bird data from the Harvard Forest site from 2015-2018.

Data Exploration

First – do a little digging into the user guide for the data and my sample code, posted on Moodle, to explore the data.

Report

Your group will submit an RMarkdown report that includes the code you used to perform your numerical and graphical data exploration.

Your report must:

  • Be well-formatted, organized, and legible.
  • Include comments so that we can easily follow your code.
  • Be reproducible: your code must run on my computer!

The following steps will help make sure your code is reproducible.

  • Store your data files in the data subfolder of your main course folder.
  • Use the here() function to specify the location of your data file.
  • Your code must not depend on the location of R’s current working directory.
    • Using here() to open your data files will ensure that it works on my computer.

Report criteria:

Your report must include:

  • A numerical data exploration.
  • A graphical exploration/summary of the data.
  • A research question along with null and alternative hypotheses.

PowerPoint Slide

Your group will create a slide that includes:

  • Research Question.

  • Your group must clearly articulate a research question that is answerable using the NEON data.

  • Null and Alternative Hypotheses

  • You must clearly state null and alternative hypotheses to accompany your research question.

  • Graphical Summary

  • You will create a plot that is appropriate for your research question.

  • Your plot must be nicely formatted, including informative title, axis labels, and legend.

The powerpoint slide is meant to be a brief summary of your report. You don’t need to fit everything from your report onto the slide, just the key take-home points of your analyses!

In-Class Presentation

  • Your group will designate 1 or 2 members to briefly present your slide to the class.

Submission Instructions:

Documents

As a group, you’ll submit the following documents via Moodle:

  • Knitted R Markdown report.
  • 1-slide PowerPoint presentation