Find one or more publicly-available, non-trivial 1 data sets of interest to you. Identify a real-to-life organization whose future decision on some matter may be informed by your planned analysis of those data. The organization may be any specific for-profit, non-profit, or government. You may not choose our class examples as a topic.
Compose a short, 250 words maximum 2 memo written to the chief analytics officer at your chosen organization.
Use this memo to request that you draft a proposal of — and later perform — a new analysis on the identified data in which you expect it will inform the organization’s decision.
A new analysis is one in which you would — if your memo persuades the analytics executive to approve your plan to write a proposal and conduct an analysis — explore, visualize, and optionally model the identified data to uncover patterns relating to or informing the organization’s decision or opportunity. An analysis is not merely reporting someone else’s analysis or summary of that data.
You are writing from the role of either a consultant to that organization, or as one of its employees. To understand your audience, review Zetlin (2017), and conduct online research (google searches, linkedin, etcetera).
Your memo will be assessed on the following:
Focused, concise language using techniques from class discussions.
Organization of the memo, using the concepts from class discussions and readings (e.g., Doumont, Storr, Sharot, Zinsser, Booth).
Appropriate for an analytics executive. Consider the (likely) goals and background of your executive.
Effectively persuades your audience of your project’s feasibility, value, and to approve of a proposal and analysis.
Appropriately identifies / cites your data and other sources.