apply your data mining knowledge to real-life data and to mine managerially-relevant insights. 

The primary objective of the project is to encourage you to explore and think about potential applications of the techniques you will learn in this class. This group project offers you an opportunity to apply your data mining knowledge to real-life data and to mine managerially-relevant insights.  Please note that this is a semester long

A final report/presentation (225 points) – a Microsoft PowerPoint document containing slides of the following types:

1. Cover/Title
2. Executive summary
3. Project motivation/background
4. Data description
5. Data preparation activities
6. Models used – at least three distinct techniques (with screenshots of related SAS EM output)
7. Findings
8. Managerial/business implications
9. Conclusions
10. References (if needed)

Here are a few additional things to consider.

1. There is no Word document.  The report is in the form of a PowerPoint Presentation.
2. Not just screenshots.  Because the report is a PowerPoint Presentation you may be tempted to just insert a bunch of screenshots.  I do want screenshots of models, results, etc. but they should be annotated so I have some sense of why they are there and what I am supposed to take from the slide.
3. Keep it tight.  Fully explaining your final project in the form of a PowerPoint (without the benefit of being able to verbally explain during a presentation) should be hard.  You need to balance telling a good (and complete) story against generating excessive numbers of slides.  If you were presenting I would be looking for about 15 minutes of content.  Given that timeline, I would expect approximately 20 slides… this is a guideline and not an absolute, but please try and tell a complete and concise story.
4. Tell a coherent story.  The story is important… I want to know what you did and why.  I want to know what models you ran and which was the best performer.  I also want to know what that model says and why that is important to the organization.