Mid-Quarter Presentation Grading Rubric

This document outlines the requirements for the mid-quarter presentation for the Data Science Clinic at the University of Chicago.

The purpose of the mid-quarter presentation is to share what you are working on with the rest of the clinic. These are “quick” lightning talks that are designed to share basic information about the project. The goal isn’t to focus on the specifics, but to describe the general parameters of the problem and highlight interesting aspects.

Your objective is to introduce your classmates to your project. You should assume that your audience is like you:

• Has a grounding, but isn’t an expert in statistics / programming / machine learning techniques, etc.
• Isn’t that interested in the nitty-gritty details, derivations, etc.

There is a strict time limit on the presentation (3-5 minutes). Historically the best presentations tends to be about 4 minutes long because they focus the project down to a manageable level. Presentations that go the entire five minutes (usually) are too long, not specific enough and are more poorly received, grade-wise.

When planning your talk keep focused on the core of your project. This presentation is not a catalog, but a high-level map of the project.

The presentation will be conducted live during a specific week of the quarter at the time of the normal class. It is strongly recommended that you go to lecture that week in order to see what everyone is up to!

Requirements

• The presentation should be 3-5 minutes. This is a hard limit and your grade will be negatively impacted if you go outside this limit.
• Use the provided template for the presentation slides. Do not add more than three additional slides.
• The template has three options to define your project problem: Analytics, Data Science, or Engineering. Choose one. For some projects, the problem type might span more than one – use your best judgment.

Grading

All students in a group will receive the same grade in the presentation. Not all students need to present. Assessment will be made by the faculty and mentors who attend the mid-quarter presentations.

Slides (20 points):

• Are there obvious grammar errors, spelling problems or formatting issues?
• Are the slides at the appropriate understanding level?

Presentation (40 points):

• Are the presenters speaking loudly and clearly?
• Are the presenters showing enthusiasm?
• Are the presenters looking at the crowd or staring at the slides?
• Were questions answered?
• Was the problem well framed? Was the detail level appropriate?

Dos and Don’ts

• Make sure to spend time framing the problem, describing why it’s important and how what you are doing links to it.
• Every project has interesting and unexpected aspects – you want to highlight those. Are there any cool visualizations? What about results?
• Do not violate any NDA/share any special sauce.
• Do not read lists of numbers from the slides.
• No screenshots of tables or code. There should be no code.
• No videos. To ease the logistics all presentations will be done from a single laptop that may not be able to display it correctly. Assume that the presentation will be static.
• Specific descriptions of technology tend to be low information and uninformative. It’s okay to have a system diagram if the project has a large engineering component.
• Do not try to teach. Explaining how a neural network or deep learning works, mathematically defining multiple accuracy measures, etc. are beyond the scope of this presentation. You are trying to meet the audience where they are, not teach.

How to get an “A”

In two easy steps!

1. Read this rubric and the template carefully, making sure to follow all instructions.
2. Rehearse your presentation 2-3 times, making sure that you stay within the allotted time. These are lightning talks with a template already created to minimize the amount of work required. Do not deviate from the template format.

Late Policy

Groups that miss their designated presentation day will receive a grade of zero.