Methodology Memo

Analytical Question

What is the client asking? What type of question is this (descriptive, inferential, predictive, causal)? What would a good answer look like?

What datasets are you working with? What is the date range, granularity, and size? Any quality issues discovered during profiling?

What features did you create? What features did you exclude and why? How did you handle categorical variables? What transformations did you apply?

How did you split training and test data? What date boundary did you use? Why is a temporal split necessary instead of a random split?

Which features were evaluated for leakage? What did you find? Which features were removed or lagged and why?

What issues did you discover in the data (missing values, censored data, system changes)? How did you handle each one?

What model did you choose? Why this model over alternatives? What evaluation metrics did you use and why?

What can this analysis NOT tell the client? What assumptions does the model rely on? Under what conditions would the results be unreliable?

What are the key findings, organized around the client's requirements? What should the client do with this information?