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Instructions and Assigned Partners for Peer Commentary Assignments



The Peer Commentary assignment is one of the most important exercises in this class. It’s a chance for you to work with your classmates to learn different perspectives on approaching and coding statistics while also engaging in respectful feedback about the ways in which your peers code, comment their code, and work through coding and statistical problems.

(Please… no Bianca Del Rio-level shade in this class; we’ll all be making mistakes this semester).

How it works…

Every week, once finished working on your Original Homework Code associated with your assigned Module (links to Homework can be found in the weekly entries on the Course Outline), you will be required to share your annoted/commented code as an R Markdown file with your weekly assigned Peer Group. At the end of your Original Homework Code, in a section labeled CHALLENGES, you will share a list of the three most difficult challenges you faced in writing your code, and what you did to overcome them. The Peer Group you share this code with will typically be a group of three, although depending on final class size it may be a group of two, and this group will change on a weekly basis (see below for your assigned groups). You must push your commented/annotated Original Homework Code to your homework repository, which you must share with your Peer Group and instructor, by 8:00 pm on Monday night. It is up to your group whether one or both of the other members work together to respectfully critique the others’ code, and groups are encouraged to meet over the weekend to discuss their code in person.

Things to keep in mind

How should we be critiquing each others’ code? There are better and worse practices for doing so. In keeping with best practices, please keep in mind the following concerns:

Before every peer commentary, please read the Codementor guide on How to Effectively and Politely Critique Code. We will discuss this in class, but please also consider reviewing the Bosu et al. paper on effective coding feedback and, above all, be mindful in how you review your Peers’ code.

How you share your code

You will be creating a new repo on GitHub, and cloning that repo to your computer so that you can make a git-referenced Rstudio project, for each individual homework assignment (instructions for each assignment on what to name that repo will be on the specific Homework webpage). Your homework code should be entered (and commented/annotated!) in an R Markdown file created and saved in your homework project, which can then be shared by ‘pushing’ it to GitHub.

You must then invite your Peer Group (and me, your instructor) to ‘Collaborate’ on that repo. Instructions for how to invite us to collaborate are here. This will generate an email invitation (sent to the email address registered to their GitHub account), which your collaborators will have to Accept.

Please keep an eye out for, and Accept, your Peer Group’s invitations each week!

Once you’re an active collaborator, you can clone your Peer’s repository to your computer, create a git-referenced Project from that repo in Rstudio, and then write and push a new R Markdown file with your comments/changes/recommendations on how to improve their code directly to their homework repo.

What you’re critiquing…

As noted in the homework instructions, while completing your homework each of you will compile a list of the most impactful challenges faced while coding it (up to five), along with how you overcame them (or what you attempted if you couldn’t overcome them). You, as a peer commenter, must spend at least an hour reviewing and testing your peer’s code with an eye towards understanding the challenges they faced, and in the process write down the following:
    1. What you learned from running their Original Homework Code that helped improve your own code.
    2. What you did in your own code that might help to improve theirs.
    3. What challenges, if any, you both faced in your code that could not be helped by comparison.
    4. Whether the annotation/commenting on your peer’s Original Homework Code is readable and interpretable to you, and if not then how it could be improved.

Although not required, you are encouraged to meet outside class so that you may work together on this process.

Ideally, as peer commenter you will give your comments back to your peer with enough time for them to take into account your comments and turn in an improved (and hopefully functional) Final Homework Code.

Students must have (1) their Original Homework Code (with Challenges noted), (2) Peer Commentaries, and (3) Final Homework Code in their Homework repo by 5:00 pm on the Due Date (see the Course Outline, Assignments, and below for all due dates!)

In class, for 10 minutes, you will be given a chance to meet with your Peer Group in order to prioritize questions or challenges that your group would like to bring to the attention of the whole class.

We will then take 30 minutes of each class to address these challenges together, and see if other Peer Groups faced similar challanges or found unique solutions to each problem, and together will do our best to solve them.

Although grades will not be assigned for Peer Commentaries, if it comes to my attention that particular students are not actively participating in this process, it will be considered when negotiating their argument for their final grade.

Who you’re working with…

The students currently enrolled in Spring 2025 (and their associated GitHub accounts) include:

And my own GitHub account is:

Assigned Peer Groups

Homework 01: Push It! (Assigned 28JAN, Peer Comments by 31JAN, Due 03FEB)

Note that these were shuffled a little on 28JAN to reflect technical difficulties and absences, so please check your Peer Group in case there were changes!

Peer Group 1: Sylvie Adams, Carly McDermott, Lindsay Warrell, Yinuo Mao

Peer Group 2: Yongliang Cen, Christian Mei, Sherry Xie

Peer Group 3: Claire Zhang, Jaclyn Meyer, Charles Yung

Peer Group 4: Amita Ganesh, Gentry Miller, Jonathan Zhang

Peer Group 5: Pingwen Lin, Benjamin Peters, Akiva Zeff

Peer Group 6: Brenda Kim, Faria Shahriar, Jason Zeng

Peer Group 7: Sunny Kim, Megna Sriram, Tiffany Zhu

Peer Group 8: Carla Rojas, Soumalya Ghorui, Alexandra Walsh, Matteo Finnerty

Homework 02: Titis in the Mist (Assigned 04FEB, Peer Comments by 07FEB , Due 10FEB)

Peer Group 1: Sherry Xie, Alexandra Walsh, Amita Ganesh

Peer Group 2: Gentry Miller, Megna Sriram, Matteo Finnerty, Carla Rojas

Peer Group 3: Sunny Kim, Faria Shahriar, Claire Zhang, Yinuo Mao

Peer Group 4: Jaclyn Meyer, Pingwen Lin, Jonathan Zhang

Peer Group 5: Carly McDermott, Jason Zeng, Sylvie Adams

Peer Group 6: Christian Mei, Benjamin Peters, Tiffany Zhu

Peer Group 7: Soumalya Ghorui, Akiva Zeff, Brenda Kim

Peer Group 8: Yongliang Cen, Lindsay Warrell, Charles Yung

Homework 03: Some of My Best Friends are Zombies (Assigned 18FEB, Peer Comments by 26FEB, Due 03MAR)

Peer Group 1: Sunny Kim, Sherry Xie, Pingwen Lin

Peer Group 2: Brenda Kim, Jaclyn Meyer, Tiffany Zhu

Peer Group 3: Carly McDermott, Gentry Miller, Jonathan Zhang

Peer Group 4: Christian Mei, Charles Yung, Lindsay Warrell

Peer Group 5: Benjamin Peters, Jason Zeng, Yongliang Cen, Yinuo Mao

Peer Group 6: Alexandra Walsh, Matteo Finnerty, Amita Ganesh

Peer Group 7: Akiva Zeff, Megna Sriram, Soumalya Ghorui, Carla Rojas

Peer Group 8: Faria Shahriar, Sylvie Adams, Claire Zhang

Homework 04: What’s Your Malfunction? (Assigned 04MAR, Peer Comments by 12MAR, Due 17MAR)

Peer Group 1: Brenda Kim, Jason Zeng, Megna Sriram

Peer Group 2: Akiva Zeff, Carly McDermott, Jaclyn Meyer, Yinuo Mao

Peer Group 3: Yongliang Cen, Lindsay Warrell, Claire Zhang

Peer Group 4: , Matteo Finnerty, Faria Shahriar, Gentry Miller

Peer Group 5: Alexandra Walsh, Benjamin Peters, Sunny Kim, Carla Rojas

Peer Group 6: Christian Mei, Sylvie Adams, Sherry Xie

Peer Group 7: Charles Yung, Amita Ganesh, Soumalya Ghorui

Peer Group 8: Pingwen Lin, Jonathan Zhang, Tiffany Zhu

Homework 05: Boots for Days! (Assigned 01APR, Peer Comments by 09APR, Due 14APR)

Peer Group 1: Sylvie Adams, Yongliang Cen, Jaclyn Meyer

Peer Group 2: Gentry Miller, Akiva Zeff, Amita Ganesh

Peer Group 3: Charles Yung, Christian Mei, Claire Zhang, Carla Rojas

Peer Group 4: Matteo Finnerty, Carly McDermott, Brenda Kim

Peer Group 5: Sunny Kim, Benjamin Peters, Faria Shahriar

Peer Group 6: Sherry Xie, Lindsay Warrell, Tiffany Zhu, Yinuo Mao

Peer Group 7: Alexandra Walsh, Jason Zeng, Soumalya Ghorui

Peer Group 8: Pingwen Lin, Megna Sriram, Yongliang Cen