Phys5053
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Proposal guidelines: The project proposal serves two goals. The first goal is for you to plan your work, to think it through. The second goal is for me to give you feedback on whether your project is reasonable and, equally important, on whether it is feasible. The proposal should give a clear idea of what you are going to do, what kind of data you are going to use, what kind of techniques you are planning to employ, and what results you anticipate. The proposal will not be graded. I suggest that you structure your proposal so that it addresses the following topics:

1. Introduction, the broader context of the project.
2. The types and the amounts of data that you will be analysing. Specifying the amounts (e.g., the number of data points) will help you anticipate whether you will have enough statistics to make meaningful conclusions.
3. The scientific questions that you will be addressing by doing the analyses or the hypotheses that you will be testing.
4. The techniques that you will be using.

Presentation guidelines

Dec 10, Friday		Mark
		Grant
		Kuravi
		Thomas
		Lucas
		Linus
Dec 13, Monday		Dan
		April
		Jiying

Final report guidelines:

Format your report as a research article:
- Introduction
- Methods
- Results
- Discussion
- Conclusions
- References

In the Introduction, give the general context, the type of data that are available, the questions that need to be answered about the data, and what will be the purpose of your analysis.
In the Methods, describes the techniques. State the caveats and approximations that may affect the interpretation of your results. State the data precision and the uncertainties.
In the Results, present the outcomes of your analysis. Refer to graphs and tables. State the important numerical values. Estimate uncertainties and probabilities. 
The Discussion section is to provide an interpretation for the results that you presented in the Results section. Discuss the meaning of the results in the broader context. Cite the results of previous investigators, if available. Compare your results to the results that you might have expected based on previous works or some other considerations. Do the results make sense? What is their physical meaning? Discuss how the approximations that you've made or the imperfections in the data may have influenced your results. Suggest possible improvements.
In Conclusions, re-state the main findings: numerical values or qualitative statements. Don't forget the uncertainties.

Use the proper academic style (Strunk and White is a good starting point). Remember that a picture is worth... you know how much, and so is a table.