Commit a report describing your initial results, as
file reports/week7/report.pdf.
The goal of this assignment is to ensure that you are on the right track with your project. Rather than leaving all the work to a mad rush at the end of the quarter, you will ensure that you are making good progress throughout. This forcing function will ensure that your methodology is complete and your experimental tools are operational and able to process data. Feedback will ensure that you are making good progress.
Your report will include (nearly) everything you have written so far: there is no need to rewrite, nor to delete except where your plans have changed. Address all previous feedback. As usual, update your schedule if necessary. You will need to add new text discussing your initial results. You might need to expand on your description of your methodology.
You should have some initial results, but it doesn't have to be a lot. Even showing that you can process a few datapoints automatically will demonstrate that your data analysis pipeline works.
Your report should indicate where to find the version control repository that contains the scripts to reproduce your results. That repository should contain instructions that enable someone not on your team can create all the tables and figures in your report, starting from scratch.
When generating tables and figures, never cut-and-paste numbers from one location to another. It's best if all tables and figures in your document are automatically generated. It's acceptable (though discouraged) to use a GUI program if you prefer it, such as Excel for generating plots. If you do, then there should be no user interaction, such as cut-and-pasting, within the GUI program. For example, your experimental infrastructure would create the full file, and the user action would be just to start Excel, open the file, then export the PDF file with the figure. Automatically generating your tables has two advantages. First, it prevents errors. Second, it enables you to easily re-generate them as often as you like, without extra manual effort.
The report should indicate a README file in a repository (maybe your main one, or maybe a different one), which has sufficient instructions to enable someone who is not on your team to reproduce all of your results.
At the end of your document, state many hours you spent on the assignment.
Your team will act as another team's customer.