### Project Description.  V1 10/14.
#### Network Analysis, Stat 992.  Fall 2015. 

Your project should (1) ask a question that is substantively interesting, (2) answer this question (this is your thesis statement), (3) provide evidence to support your answer, and (4) discuss the limitations of your analysis.  The bulk of the paper will give the evidence to support your thesis.  This evidence should come from analyzing the referral network.  Your project should have the broad structure of an academic publication (e.g. abstract, labeled figures, bibliography, etc.). Your writing should be clear and your figures should be "ready for publication".  

Groups should have three or four members.  Groups of two or five are ok, but please consult instructor asap.  A group with $k$ group members should write a paper that is roughly $k \times 1,500$ words long (depending on formatting, there are usually between 250 and 400 words/page).  The $k \times 1,500$ is a guideline.  No project should exceed 10,000 words without prior consent from the instructor.

A high quality project will necessarily . . .   
1) link and analyze (at least!) one additional data source,   
2) include several figures to illustrate the evidence,  
3) provide an .Rmd document (with comments!) that recreates the analysis,   
4) . . . 

##### Proposal
Sometime in the first two weeks of November, your group must present a "proposal".  This is a (roughly) 5-10 minute class presentation to describe what you want to study, *why you think it is interesting*, and why you think it is feasible.  You do not need to actually *perform* the analysis, but perhaps some initial steps are necessary to illustrate the feasibility.  Your main task is to convince the class (and visitors) that someone should care about your analysis.  

This presentation should have slides.  In addition to this presentation, you should have a short document to share on the course webpage.  This document should be interpretable to someone who did not attend your talk.  If your slides are sufficiently detailed, this document can be your slides, but perhaps you want to include more detail in this document than is written in the slides.  You must give these documents to the instructor at least 24 hours before the class presentations. 