Exploratory Project

Neural networks are one of the most broadly applicable machine learning tools we’ve seen in the course, and can be used in a wide variety of different settings. Instead of completing Traffic, you have the option for this unit to complete an exploratory project, where you build a neural network for a classification task of your choosing.

To complete the exploratory project, you should:

• Pick a topic area of interest to you: options include art, biology, business, energy, engineering, epidemiology, finance, government, language, law, medicine, music, sports, and more.
• Find a data set about the topic.
• Send a brief proposal email to Brian, Doug, and your assigned teaching fellow describing what topic you’d like to explore and what data set you plan to use.
• Once your project is approved (unapproved projects may not be submitted!), build a neural network using TensorFlow to perform a classification task based on your data set.
• Submit the code for your network along with a comprehensive README.md file that describes, in one or more paragraphs, how to run your program. Your teaching fellow should, ideally, be able to do everything they would need to do with the project by reading the README alone.

Data sets of interest might include

• Census data
• Global COVID-19 data
• U.S. government open data
• Kaggle data sets
• any other data set of your own interest and choosing!

How to Submit

1. Download a ZIP file containing your implementation of this project.
2. Go to CSCI E-80’s Gradescope page.
3. Click Project 5: Exploratory.
4. Drag and drop your ZIP file to the area that says “Drag & Drop”.
5. Click Upload.

You should see a message that says “Project 5: Exploratory submitted successfully!” Contact your teaching fellow if not!