Writing Conclusions
Hello everyone. Welcome back to Introduction to Portfolio presented by Advik from Downtown East High School in Pennsylvania. This is going to be the last episode going over how to write conclusions and thank you to TSA Global for allowing me to post these videos.
So the content for all three of the different events that I've mentioned previously kind of vary.
So for data science and analytics and research based events, it's just the conclusion of your findings and next steps. It's pretty straightforward. Next slide I'll go over how to do it in depth, but it's just citing your data and then backing it up with studies and the analysis that you've already done. So they're pretty easy to write.
Audio podcasting like in other digital model events like music production or um digital video. It's just citing your sources and materials. This isn't even graded on the rubric technically. It's just in the um documentation portfolio section where it's just you have all the elements you need. So it's pretty straightforward. I'll go over how to do it, but it's not really graded that heavily.
And then lastly, engineering design, which is just the reflection of your solution. So it's how well it works, the efficiency of it, how it fits into the prompt, and how it solves the problem you're trying to solve. I'll go over all of that later in this video, but that's a brief overview.
So firstly, data science, the conclusion covers both the conclusion itself and next steps. It's two different sections obviously. So the conclusion should recap all the key points and all the findings that you found in your analysis or your results section. So you should emphasize the data that conveys the points that you're trying to make the most.
So again, I'm going to keep on going back to the portfolio that me and my team made this year where we investigated the lack of affordable housing. So we investigated how affordable hours we emphasized how affordable housing was going up. So the HPI index, we emphasized that that was going up a lot in our conclusion. And then we also emphasized the indicators that were going down more than other ones.
Obviously mention everything that you investigated but talk more about the things that prove your point because now it's not the time to say oh this worked this didn't like in the results it's now more so the time to prove your point because the conclusion is saying this is happening this is why these are the stats and then okay each so at least for data science you get two hours or two pages for your conclusion so you have like enough room to write a run a paragraph for every single area you studied assuming you didn't study more than like six um and make sure you're citing the data sets that you're using like you can you don't have to obviously you don't have to in text citation it you can just say according to like the FBI's Census Bureau whatever or like the Federal Reserve economic data data set you don't and that's pretty much it just to give an introduction to it.
The paragraphs should just give a short overview of your analysis and then one or two statistics that really prove your point. So you can be like the um overall increase was this percentage and from year to year it increased this much.
Um, moving on to the next steps. It just should just give several strategies that can be used or cover from whatever you're investigating. This isn't really limited to data science, although it is a rubric item on data science and geospatial, too. You can mention this because it just gives the judges hope. It'll make a better connotation to your entire portfolio because they'll be like, "Oh, well, now there's something we can look forward to. It's not just the end." So it's just there should be around like four strategies with three to four sentences each that thoroughly describe each strategy that you're proposing.
So for example, let's say for the lack of affordable housing, we were trying to propose housing plans to get like landlords out of debt so that they didn't have to charge as much. We could extend on who that would affect, what landlords would qualify for this aid, and so on and so forth. Don't go too in depth and write out the entire policy. Just give a brief overview because you're not actually making these. You're not taking action. You're saying that we should take action, but you're not doing anything. So, it doesn't need to be too in-depth.
And also, when you're creating these strategies, ask yourself if it's doable in the current economic and political climate. So, this depends on the prompt. So, obviously this year was real estate, but let's say next year is more based on bio like biology like trees and deforestation, stuff like that. It's going to be a little trickier to, you know, combine the political and economical stances that are in whatever country you're investigating at that point in time. But for this prompt especially, factoring in certain things like tax policies or like economic trends over the past few years would definitely help with your next steps.
So here's an example of data science and what a conclusion paragraph should look like. So you see up here that this is like the main thing we're talking about. So the indicator that was being measured here is population mobility. So you can see that the statistics listed here have gone down over 3% in the last decade and then this is the reasoning for it and then down here you'll see that this reasoning is backed by a study and then the rest of the words are just like an analysis summary. So it's saying it's just making a claim backed up with evidence and then recapping it down here.
Next is audio podcasting which is the simplest out of the three. So this is going to cover audio elements, the list of hardware and software and references. This is pretty straightforward. So for all of these, there should be a summary of what you use the element for and it should be concise but somewhat detailed, right?
So for audio elements, you should be listing what the item was called in the composition, where you got the element from, what you used it for, the quantity, and like a link, right? I'll show you an example of this on the next slide, and it's pretty straightforward as long as you can see it. The hardware and software is just the tech you use to create the digital model like a mic, a camera, or anything else that you used. The computer you used to edit it and the software you used to edit. So, it's also pretty straightforward. There's not much you can do here. There's not much creativity you need. It's just writing down what you used and how you used it. And lastly, the references should be in MLA format. Please do not just write out a bunch of different links. And if you really want to get fancy with it, you can also write a summary under whatever reference you use for each and like how you use that reference.
So here's an example. So this is just some of our audio elements. So this is the name over here, right? And then this is the description of what we used it for. So camera shutter, we used it to show like participants that all eyes were on them. This is the type. So this is a sound effect. Obviously there's music down here. The quantity, so how many times you used it within your digital model. And then the link where we got it from obviously we cited this in MLA after and we wrote um a paragraph not a paragraph like one or two sentences under it just like this describing what we got it from again.
And then lastly is engineering design and again unfortunately the portfolio got corrupted so I do not have an example to show you guys but it's pretty straightforward for this as well. So this is just the communication of the solution and you only get one page with this. So you want to be concise and brief because an engineering design portfolio is extremely long right? So you want to make it as brief as possible to fit everything that you want to mention in there and don't try to over simplify anything.
Don't just say this is that you'll have some room like you'll have some breathing room to write about whatever you created but just don't make it too long. Right? So this is the format me and my team used. I think it's very, you know, easy. So there's only one page. So you want to talk about the functionality solution, what it fits the theme and how it will resolve the problems you're trying to resolve. Right? So space the conclusion into five separate paragraphs.
The first paragraph should just be an introduction and addressing how it fits the prompt and what you're solving. So for example, the prompt this year was the nitrogen like the nitrogen cycle and then me and my team we did a nitrogen filter. So we just talked about what it really was and how it fit the prompt.
The second and third paragraph should discuss how it's able to resolve whatever problem you're targeting. So we were focusing on nitrogen pollution in water. So, we talked about how the nitrogen filter had X, Y, and Z which could filter out nitrogen and send it into the atmosphere instead of being in the water affecting freshwater communities, right? This won't take you too long. The paragraph will be like four or five sentences each. I don't like to go in depth and say every single mechanism. Just say the major ones and what they're doing.
The fourth paragraph should just talk about the functionality of it in the real world, the work it could be implemented. Um, if there's a real world scenario like for example if we talked about like we talked about the Great Barrier Reef in Australia and how if it's implemented there wildlife would be or the population would skyrocket and I mean it just gives more context for where this innovation can be used. I would recommend it but it's not needed. The fifth paragraph should just be a nice conclusion to just wrap everything up.
So that concludes the entire course of introduction to portfolio. Thank you so much to TSA Global for allowing me to post this and thank you guys so much for listening. Um, in one to two months after this is released, if there are comments, I will look through them and I'll make a frequently asked questions video just to go over a little bit more because this is being recorded in July. So, there should be a lot of time until TSA competition season. But anyways, yeah, thank you all for listening and I hope you guys have a good one.