DSM500

MSc Examination

DATA SCIENCE

Final Project

Release date: Example exam

Time allowed: 3 hours

INSTRUCTIONS TO CANDIDATES

An additional 30 minutes has been added to the usual 3-hour assessment time
to allow for the download of the assessment paper and the upload of your
completed answers to the VLE. You must upload by the end of the assessment
time.

Your answers must have your candidate number written clearly at the top of the
page before you upload your work. Do not write your name anywhere in your
answers.

Submitting word processed or handwritten answers:

You do not need to remain online when writing your word processed or
handwritten parts of assessments.
Where possible, you are asked to submit our work as a PDF document,
although you can choose to handwrite the assessment, if you wish.

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 Where you include diagrams or mathematical formulae, you may wish to
submit these as handwritten answers with your completed assessment
paper. These will need to be photographed with your mobile
device/scanner and submitted through the VLE together with your
assessment paper.
If you have chosen to handwrite your assessment, this will also need to be
photographed with a mobile device/scanner and submitted through the VLE.

There are seven questions in this paper. Candidates should answer all seven
questions. The marks for each part of a question are indicated at the end of the
part in [.] brackets.

There are 100 marks available on this paper.

Calculators are not required in this examination.

© University of London 2021

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 To examiners: please note that the purpose of this exam is in part to test
whether the student knows about the content of their project report, thereby
establishing (to some extent, but not perfectly) that the work was mainly their
own.
In view of this, it is very likely that many students will score high marks. This
is fine. Please bear this in mind when you are marking these papers, and don’t
be tempted to lower the marks or be stricter, because it looks like the spread
of marks is too high. We are also trying to test whether students understand
what doing projects is all about and whether the work they’ve submitted was
mostly done by themselves (which most will have), which ends up skewing the
distribution.

Question 1
(a) What is an abstract and what is its role in academic writing? [4]
It is a succinct summary of the main questions and results that are
presented in the report, paper or thesis that follows (2). Its role is to give
potential readers an idea of whether the work is relevant to their interests
(2).

(b) What is a research hypothesis? [3]

Expecting something relating to the subject guide, which describes null
and alternate hypothesis testing, but accept anything that is correct.

(c) Did you have a research hypothesis? If you did, say what it was and why
it was appropriate. If you did not, explain why you chose not to have one
and what you did instead. [8]
This should relate to the project

Question 2
(a) What are the three most important reference sources that you made use
of in your project? State what they were (you do not need to give complete
citation, but you must give enough information for it to be clear to which
material you are referring), describe them briefly, and explain for each one
the relevance to your project. [12]
For each, need an indentification (1), a description (1), and an explanation
of relevance (2)

(b) Explain how the work of your project extends or enhances or critiques
— or is connected to in another way — the work in one of the above
references. Make it clear which reference your answer relates to. [7]

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 Should relate to project and show some insight.

(c) Name one reference that you read but which ended up not being included
in the reference list. Explain why it was not included. [2]
This could be either one that turned out not to be relevant and the student
should explain why; or it could be that it is not in the reference list because
it is not explicitly cited.

Question 3

(a) A research project requires a variety of different kinds of writing.

Describe and discuss two different kinds of writing that could be
appropriate to conducting and completing your project. Explain what they
are, and also discuss the use you made of these in your project, giving
concrete examples where appropriate. [10]
5 for each. 2 for description, 3 for how used and examples. Discussions of
these have been provided in the course material and in exercises students
were asked to complete.

(b) What is the purpose of an appendix? How would you decide whether to
include material in the main report, in an appendix, or not at all? Relate
your answer to your own project. [6]
It is to include information that is referred to in, but not central to, the main
report. You do not include it if you never mention it in the report, and you
put it in an appendix if it is not central detail. Of course this is not hard
and fast. (4) Relating to own project (2)

Question 4

(a) What was the main methodology used in your project? Explain why you
took this approach and comment on whether you feel it was an appropriate
one to take. [8]
Expecting a brief description of how they went about answering question,
or testing hypothesis (2) why they went the way they did (4) and an
evaluation of whether it worked (2)

(b) At the end of the project, what conclusions were you able to draw
regarding the hypothesis or investigation described above? [8]
Expecting the conclusion that they presented in the report (3) related to
the actual question or hypothesis(2). (3) for a description of how they got
from the question to the conclusion.

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Question 5

(a) Project deliverables can be seen as the concrete things that you would
produce as outcomes of your project. Describe the deliverables you
produced in the course of your project, and how they relate to the main
aims or questions or hypothesis. [10]
Some self reflection. up to 6 for actual deliverables and up to 6 for links to
the aims; though 10 in total max.

Question 6

(a) What was the most challenging or difficult part of your project? Explain
why it was challenging and what you did to meet the challenge. (Please
focus on the academic content of your project, rather than on your
approach to doing the project. For example, we are not expecting
answers like ’time management’, or ’sticking to my schedule’; we are
interested in your understanding of the subject area and the issues
around doing projects in that area.) [10]
Looking for some insight into what aspects of their work were hard. 3
marks for what, 3 for why, and 4 for what they did about it. Be flexible
about how you assign this.

Question 7

(a) Which of the conclusions you came to at the end of your project do you
consider to be the most significant? Explain why you feel this is the most
important. [6]
Should relate to the report(2), but should also show insights. (4) could be
becayse of the ’weight’ or because of the level of confidence in them.

(b) What advice would you give to a student next year, who was taking the
conclusions and further work section of your project as the basis of their
own project? The advice should focus on the topic itself, such as the
potential research questions and methodology rather than on conducting
projects in general, such as time management. [6]
Should relate to the report(2), but should also show insights. (4)

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