AP Research Project Portfolio

December 19, 2019

To whom it may concern:

This page is intended to serve as my portfolio for my AP Research class. My research centers around the idea of promoting equity among high-school teams in the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC). Teams participating in the FIRST Robotics Competition must overcome many obstacles before being able to successfully build a competitive robot. Fundraising enough to sustain the team, gaining mentor support, and finding a space to work are just a few of the examples of necessary components to a team which are not traditionally considered. Teams from lower-income schools or communities are more impacted by these obstacles, and must work harder to be successful in competition.

I've been concerned with equity of STEM education throughout my high school experience, as I have had the privilege to participate on two FRC teams. I decided to investigate whether the efforts that the Game Design Committee (which designs the game released to teams each year) has been making to promote equity are truly effective. Plenty of data has been collected on team performance during competitions, and using Python data analysis libraries, I am able to analyze whether teams which face more difficult obstacles have been improving their performance (on average) as a result of more equitable games.

I have sectioned off each artifact in this portfolio in a timeline in order to demonstrate how my work has progressed. I have organized my artifacts in chronological order (in accordance with the timeline). I begin with one of our first assignments in AP Research after deciding our topics. This preliminary chart was assigned in late August. My last artifact is code that I have written in preparation for beginning my research.

All my artifacts are original content (created in some way by me) because no single source has significantly impacted my research. I believe this shows the originality of my research. Very little research has been done on the FIRST Robotics Comeptition other than collecting data about demographics and the positive impacts of the program. Reading these statistics and realizing the true impact of this amazing program was inspirational. I decided to take a slightly different approach to my research, and I believe that it has a great deal of potential to positively impact the creation of future FRC games. As a result, more teams facing significant obstacles will be able to achieve competitive success.

All of my artifacts will help anyone interested in my research understand the rationale behind the process I am using. Initially, it is quite confusing to grasp the many factors which play a part in my research. The charts and diagrams lay out the methodology sequentially and logically, allowing the reader to think through it. My Sticky Note Chart is similar, in that it organizes each of the sources I am using into categories which reflect each step in my research. Personally, all five of these artifacts will allow me to stay organized in the process of writing the code for my project and keep track of the variables being used.

Sincerely,

Dee Iyer

Table of Contents

Artifact 1

Problem Statement Chart (08/26/2019)

Source - Original content

Significance

First instance where all aspects of my research were organized on paper—from the purpose of this topic to the initial ideas for methodology.

Relationship

This artifact does not necessarily take an "angle" on my research. Rather, it is the first time I consolidated my ideas on paper and began to shape the direction it would take. The problem statement written here is the result of a great deal of revision and refining with my original ideas. I also was able to establish the value of my research, which is not very apparent to an external reader.

Artifact 2

Process and Methods Chart (08/29/2019)

Source - Original content

Significance

Established ethical considerations in my research, preliminary organization tool.

Relationship

We filled these charts out when preparing to submit our proposals for research to the Institutional Review Board. Following a chart asking yes or no questions, we were able to gain an idea of how many ethical considerations our projects had and what to prepare for. This was especially applicable to those with human subjects, but I was fortunate enough to not have to worry about dealing with human subjects or submitting survey questions to the IRB. Regardless of the lack of ethical issues with my project, outlining the process and implementation details was helpful. I had to section off the vague ideas I had into concrete and distinct steps in order to create the chart. I was able to realize the next steps to take in my research.

Artifact 3

Elevator Pitch Poster (11/04/2019)

Source - Original content

Significance

Marked the first time I presented my ideas to peers and explained the process of my research out loud.

Relationship

This poster served as a preliminary, rough outline of what my paper will eventually look like. It outlined the specific sections which will be present in the paper, such as the Research Question, Hypotheses, Assumptions, and Definitions. Outlining each of these sections was similar to deconstructing the paper and focusing on individual sections at a time. Via the oral aspect of the project, I was able to gather feedback from peers and identify flaws in my methodology as well as areas I may have missed that are confusing to a reader.

Artifact 4

Sticky Note Chart - Annotated Bibliography (11/20/2019)

Source - Original content

Significance

Organized all 20 sources from Annotated Bibliography into categories specific to steps in the research process.

Relationship

This artifact differs from the others, since it focuses less on process/methodology and more on how to use the sources I have found to give the reader context in my paper. My annotated bibliography was organized into sections, but it still wasn't entirely clear how the different sources connected to each other. By writing summaries of each source on a sticky note, I could manipulate their order and see how to best write the introduction of the paper.

Artifact 5

Preliminary API Requests (ongoing—last edit Nov. 2019)

Source - Original content

Significance

First instance of data being pulled from TheBlueAlliance API, first step towards completing research.

Relationship

In order to be confident in my research, I realized that I should establish that I can pull data from online databases using the programming language of my choice. I was able to get this working rather quickly, and now I'm able to use the API from TheBlueAlliance (which gathers data on team performance at competitions) to print out data for sets of teams. This is the first step in my research.

Summary statement

Through looking back through all the work I have done in the past semester, I was able to regroup my thoughts and understand where I am in my research. This was especially helpful after the stress of finals week and all the other end-of-semester activities going on. I was able to make a plan of what I need to do in the near future in order to be ready to dive into my research next semester.

Looking back at the five artifacts I chose, I began to think more about why I didn't use any external sources as an artifact. As I explained in the cover letter, much of my research is original and has very little literature in academia available. Although the literature review and the annotated bibliography were challenging to complete, I will be able to use the sources I have to provide sufficient context to the reader. It is often difficult for people who haven't experienced FRC to understand what it is and how it works. Outlining the sources with artifact 4 allows me to explain the context in a more organized way.

I've learned a lot from doing this portfolio; some of the things I learned are related to AP Research and my project, but some skills I developed were not directly related. One of the biggest results of this portfolio was improving my HTML knowledge and skills. I decided to host the portfolio on my website as I realized that images are easier to embed in HTML, and I would have more flexibility in terms of formatting. Normally, I use LaTeX documents in this class, but the portfolio presented an opportunity to do something new. In relation to my research, however, the main thing I learned was how far my topic has developed. When we were choosing topics, I was very indecisive and torn between a few topics. After analyzing all the formative work we did in the class, I realize that I chose a good topic to stick with.

In the process of creating this portfolio, I began to think about what I could potentially do in the future with the topic I chose. It would be an interesting project to create a neural network to generate the most equitable FRC game it can, and train it with the data I collect in my research right now. I originally began thinking of incorporating this idea into my main research project, but it requires a lot of in-depth training, practice, and application before I gain the skills to be able to complete the idea. However, it may be worth pursuing in the future!