The Project
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Teams build a machine learning application/system thatsolves a real problem of their choosing, running the full arc over the semester. Module 1 and Module 2 sessions feed into the project as it progresses through phases.
What each team does
- Identify a real problem worth solving with ML.
- Scope it — decide whether and how ML helps, identify downstream actions, and define success.
- Formulate the ML problem and its baselines.
- Build baselines and ML models
- Evaluate and make recommendations for decision-makers and users.
Examples of Projects
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GenAI in the project
Every team:
- Implements an LLM zero/few-shot baseline as part of the baseline step
- May use LLMs for one or more pipeline stages (data collection, data wrangling, linkage, labeling, feature generation, modeling, etc.) — evaluated against human ground truth.
- Writes a short GenAI-use reflection: where the tools helped, where they misled, and how the team verified their output.
Project timeline
Each milestone is a Canvas assignment — see Assignments & Grading.
| Due | Milestone |
|---|---|
| Thu Aug 28 | Team creation |
| Mon Aug 31 | Submit project idea |
| Mon Sep 14 | Project proposal and scope |
| Tue Sep 15 | 3-minute project pitch |
| Thu Oct 1 | Implement baseline(s) — including the LLM baseline |
| Tue Oct 6 | Project update presentation |
| Tue Oct 20 | Initial ML solution |
| Thu Nov 5 | Evaluation |
| Thu Nov 19 | Iteration 2 — add one component from Module 2 |
| Tue Dec 1 | Project presentation |
| Tue Dec 8 | Project writeup and demo |
Add one component from Module 2. For the final writeup, every team extends its system with one Module 2 topic applied to their problem — a fairness/equity audit, an interpretability or uncertainty analysis, a robustness/shift check, a field-evaluation design, or a foundation-model / agent component — and reports what they found.
Deliverables & rubrics
See Assignments & Grading for the full list of Canvas assignments, due dates, points, and the rubric applied to the final writeup, demo, and presentation.