Data Analysis Portfolio

Data Analysis Portfolio

Sample Schedule
Related Readings

Purpose

Technical writers often collect and interpret large amounts of specialized data to help people solve complex problems—whether it’s an environmental consultant collecting data to help a company reduce waste or an engineer running simulations to develop recommendations for a safe bridge design.

This assignment focuses on the skill of gathering relevant resources to solve a problem, analyzing those resources to determine what information they can provide, and explaining that information and its significance for people who may not share your technical background.

Deliverables

This project has four deliverables.

1. Data Analysis Slide Deck

For this assignment, you will collect data and statistics from multiple sources relevant to your research question and client. This could be qualitative (like survey data) or quantitative (like experimental datasets). For example, if you’re studying the budget of a struggling startup, you might look at their expenditures compared to the budgets of comparable startups in the area. If you’re exploring how a municipality could employ more renewable energy, you might look at data on the efficiency of different energy sources and the cost-effectiveness of particular equipment. Regardless of the problem or field, the goal is to look for data that you can interpret how and why it matters.

Once you have assembled this data, you will create your own visual representations of this data, analyze each source for significance, provide some preliminary conclusions, and explain to your client what you discovered and why it matters. You will convey this information in a set of slides designed to be presented live or read by a client on their own time.

  • Genre: Slide presentation
  • “Word” count: At least 10 slides with at least 3 of your own data visualizations
Concepts:
  • Audience: the person or group who will read and react to written communication
  • Data analysis: “the process of systematically applying statistical and/or logical techniques to describe and illustrate, condense and recap, and evaluate data” (U.S. Office of Research Integrity)
  • Document design: the writer’s choice of layout, organization, and format of a document, often selected to facilitate the greatest effectiveness, accessibility, and ease of understanding for their information and purpose
  • Research: the process of gathering information relevant to a task, goal, question, or subject

2. Literature Review

Your data analysis will likely raise some questions about the project. In the next phase, you will assess what questions are left unanswered and collect useful background literature. The sources could be technical reports, peer-reviewed studies, white papers—anything that someone else has prepared that has credibility and relevance to the problem you are researching. You will then write a brief report that reviews these sources and concludes by describing how the reviewed literature further answers previously unaddressed questions.

  • Genre: Report
  • Word count: 1,250-1,500 words
Concepts:
  • Data analysis: “the process of systematically applying statistical and/or logical techniques to describe and illustrate, condense and recap, and evaluate data” (U.S. Office of Research Integrity)
  • Genre: a set of expectations for a type of writing, often pertaining to style, language, content, and form
  • Research: the process of gathering information relevant to a task, goal, question, or subject

3. Peer Review Report

For this assignment, you will conduct a peer review of your data analysis and literature review based on a set of predetermined criteria. You will administer these tests to your peers and use the results to decide on a revision plan. You will write a peer review report for the literature review only. Your peer review report will be addressed to me. It should describe your peer review protocol for the literature, the feedback you received, and your planned revisions.

  • Genre: Report
  • Word count: 500-750 words
Concepts:
  • Usability test: a test that measures the effectiveness of a product based on users’ experience
  • User: the person or group who uses a designed product (e.g., document, online application, machine, etc.)
  • The writing process: the recursive, non-linear steps a writer takes from the beginning of a document to the end product, including prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing

4. Team Request Form

In the next unit, you will be collaborating in teams of 3-4 people, choosing one of your original clients, and writing a longer technical report to that client proposing a solution to their problem. To prepare, you will fill out a team request form ranking the topics you would most like to write about. This will help me assign teams based on interest and experience.

  • Genre: Form
  • Word count: N/A
Concepts:
  • Collaborative writing: the process of planning, prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing a document with the active contribution of multiple individuals
  • Teamwork: Work done by a group of individuals in which each individual takes responsibility for a portion of the whole and work together to ensure the effective and efficient completion of their assigned tasks