Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Nba Salaries: Assessing True Player Value, Michael Ghirardo

Statistics

This paper analyzes and calculates an advanced NBA statistic that is becoming more and more widely used in the NBA. The Adjusted plus-minus (APM) statistic measures a player’s contribution, independent of all other players on the court. The most appealing aspect to the APM is that it only attempts to capture how a team’s scoring margin changes with a particular player on and off the court. Scoring margin in basketball effects winning percentage greatly, so it only makes sense that players with high APM’s will increase their team’s scoring margin and, therefore, help win games. The APM statistic is not …

Emirical Assessment Of The Future Performance Of The S&P 500 Losers, Nicholas Powers

Statistics

In the Wall Street Journal in early 2013, there was an article posted by Andrew Bary that explored a trend in the previous 3 years of the S&P 500. The article pointed out that the average returns for the top 10 percentage decliners for 2009, 2010, and 2011 outperformed the S&P 500 for the first two weeks of the next year. These top 10 percentage decliners or losers well enough to bet on. This study looks to see if there is statistical evidence that the losers outperformed the S&P 500.

Is Obesity Socially Contagious?, Ciani Jean Sparks

Statistics

The main objective of this paper is to analyze three different articles that discuss whether obesity could be socially contagious. According to the World Health Organization in 2013, obesity is the fifth leading risk for deaths around the world. This disease has dramatically increased in the last decade, which has led scientists to believe there are other factors contributing to the epidemic besides genetics. The first article I analyzed, written by Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler, provided a logistic regression model to estimate the odds of a person becoming obese. The model included the explanatory variables: age, sex, education, smoking …

Analysis Of Dietary Patterns Over Freshman Year Of College, Chelsea Lofland

Statistics

This analysis is an investigation of changes in Cal Poly students’ eating habits over freshman year. The motivation behind this was an interest in college students’ lifestyles; college is the first time most students live on their own and it can be an important maturation period. College is stressful, exciting, liberating, and terrifying all at the same time. This distinctive life experience, along with my desire to handle big and messy data, led me to this research question.

The response variable analyzed was food consumption and the explanatory variables were: sex, race, quarter, food group, stress, exercise, BMI, sleep quality …