Group Assignments: GA#4 March 12 to April 1, 2020 The aim of this assignment is for you to work as a Team researching and compiling information, deciding on what best goes into your submission, uploading a draft and ultimately submitting your completed assignment by the due date. Each member of the Group will have a role, a role which will change for the next Group Assignment. Additionally, to ensure timely adherence to the submission deadline, a series of Milestones must be met or a penalty will be assessed. Finally, to assist in the discussion process and to give you a point of contact with the Teaching Assistant (TA) who will grade your assignment, a Group Forum for your Group Number has been established. This Forum can only be seen and used by your Group and the assigned TA. It is here that the Milestone submissions will be uploaded in WORD or PDF format. Note: you are at liberty to communicate in any “forum format” (e.g., WhatsApp) but all communication with the TA and the transmission of the Milestones must be through the Group Forum. You are encouraged to use this Forum for much of the communication between group members during the GA. Roles Assuming a Group contains 5 or 6 students, the roles for each member are outlined below. If the Group size is 4 “active” members then only one Coordinator should be appointed. If your group has fewer than 4 active members, someone should alert the course coordinator at nats1880@yorku.ca . • One or two Reference Researchers whose role will be to identify reference materials beyond the textbook and course notes for use by the Group in developing the ideas that will be presented by the Draft Writer and ultimately submitted by the Coordinators. • A Draft Writer will be selected whose role it will be to submit, in point form, a draft summary of the submission that the will be made by the Group through the Coordinators. • A Scribe/Recorder will be selected whose role it is to inform their TA of the roles of all Group members, and after the assignment has been submitted, to provide a complete summary of the activities of the Group throughout the process. • There normally will be 2 Coordinators selected from the members of the Group. Their roles will be to ensure the final written contribution for the Group is submitted before the deadline. Only one Coordinator can submit for the Group. No other Group member may submit the assignment. The Coordinators should consider feedback from the TA and all other Group members for the final draft. Editing and polishing the submission should occur before it is actually submitted. Milestones These Milestones will not be graded per se but must be adhered to in order to qualify for full marks on the assignment. Review the marking rubric for more information. Failure to meet a Milestone will result in a penalty being assessed (See below for more details on the penalty). 1. Thurs 19 March, by noon: The Roles and References of all Group members must be submitted to the Group Forum by the Scribe. 2. Thurs 26 March, by noon: The Draft Writer will submit to the Group Forum an overview of what will be contained in the Group’s final submission. This should be no more than 100 words and should be in (bullet) point form. The final submitted document must adhere closely to this draft and be based upon the references submitted in #1. 3. Wed 01 April, by noon: One of the Coordinators must upload the final submission in either WORD or PDF format to the Course Moodle site. 4. Thurs 02 April, by noon: The Scribe must submit to the Group Forum a brief but complete summary of the activities/meetings of the Group during the preparation phase. This report should mention the major contribution(s) from each of the Group members during the process and contain information where the discussions took place (e.g., Facebook, Google Hangout, Group Forum, etc.) Note: Feedback from the TA in the Group Forum on the draft will be received no later than by noon, Monday 30 March. Group Assignment #4 – The Drake Equation Dr. Frank Drake is credited in the 1960’s with deriving an equation that adopts a systematic, logical approach to answering the question, how many technologically intelligent civilizations have there been in our Galaxy since its formation, some 12 Gyr ago. In this final GA for this course, your group is asked to discuss this equation (as originally formulated by Drake and not the version in our textbook) and to use it to provide two estimations; an “optimistic” and a “pessimistic” estimation, all in 350 +/- 50 words in WORD or PDF formats. What must be included in the GA submission: The final submission should include in essay format: A very brief introduction to the equation (e.g., why it was developed and what it purports to calculate) The equation itself and what each of the factors refers to How well each of the factors is known and include both pessimistic (i.e., smallest, within reason) and optimistic (largest, within reason) estimates for the factor Finally, multiply all the factors together to obtain an “optimistic” and “pessimistic” value for N, the number of technologically intelligent civilizations that might have existed in our Galaxy. Be sure to comment on whether humankind might make contact with a technologically intelligent civilization in your lifetime based on each of these numbers. Final Submission An important Learning Outcome in this course is to be able to write clearly and persuasively about relevant scientific issues. There are a number of writing assignments in this course. Some, like this one, require a Group to submit an assignment. An assignment must satisfy all three of the following conditions to be accepted without penalty in this course: 1. It must satisfy the length requirement (i.e., acceptable number of words). 2. It must be uploaded to the course Moodle website in either WORD or PDF format. 3. It must be uploaded before the due date/time. Feedback and grading of writing assignments will be performed by experienced Teaching Assistants (TAs). While each assignment has its own rubric advertised in advance - i.e., marking scheme - the TAs are basically looking for a submission that is coherent, of the right length, presented logically, and which shows evidence for careful thought after consultation with one or more reference sources (which should be cited in any reasonable, but consistent, format). Writing simply and concisely is important in a scientific context. Finally, the "audience" is critical in any written assignment. For this course, you should target your submissions to a "peer audience"; that is, to an individual with your academic background, interest and experience but who has not yet taken this course. The deadline for the Final Submission by one of the Group Coordinators in Word or PDF format is noon Wed 01 April, 2020. Note that the Milestones discussed above must also be met in order to achieve full marks in this GA. Penalties: Failure to submit to the Group Forum on time with Milestone #1, #2 or #3 will incur a 5% penalty each to the designated submitters. For example, if the Scribe fails to report the Roles of the group members, they alone will lose the 5%. Failure to submit to the Group Forum on time with the Activity Summary will incur a 10% penalty to the designated submitter. Note: no late submissions are permitted for uploading the assignment to the course website without significant penalty (-10% per hour).