Statistics and Probability Commons^™

Health And Healthcare: Designing For The Social Determinants Of Health And Blue Zones In North Nashville, Rebecca Tonguis, Honor Thomas, Olivia Hobbs

Belmont University Research Symposium (BURS)

Owned by North Nashville’s First Community Church, a now empty site in the Osage-North Fisk neighborhood of North Nashville has been identified as a potential site for a new location of The Store, in addition to a community-centric architectural development based on the social determinants of health and informed by the principles behind Blue Zones, the locations with the highest lifespans in the world. Opened by Brad Paisley and Kimberly Williams-Paisley, The Store is a free grocery store that “allow[s] people to shop for their basic needs in a way that protects dignity and fosters hope”, for which North Nashville …

Identifying Rural Health Clinics Within The Transformed Medicaid Statistical Information System (T-Msis) Analytic Files, Katherine Ahrens Mph, Phd, Zachariah Croll, Yvonne Jonk Phd, John Gale Ms, Heidi O'Connor Ms

Rural Health Clinics

Researchers at the Maine Rural Health Research Center describe a methodology for identifying Rural Health Clinic encounters within the Medicaid claims data using Transformed Medicaid Statistical Information System (T-MSIS) Analytic Files.

Background: There is limited information on the extent to which Rural Health Clinics (RHC) provide pediatric and pregnancy-related services to individuals enrolled in state Medicaid/CHIP programs. In part this is because methods to identify RHC encounters within Medicaid claims data are outdated.

Methods: We used a 100% sample of the 2018 Medicaid Demographic and Eligibility and Other Services Transformed Medicaid Statistical Information System (T-MSIS) Analytic Files for 20 states …

Action Plan: Gym Cleanliness At The Jaeger Center, Blair A. O'Connor

CAFE Symposium 2024

I have created an action plan to assess current patrons' satisfaction with the cleaning materials provided at the Gettysburg College Jaeger Center, and increase the amount or variety if the need is there. Due to a combination of behaviors and bacteria in the Jaeger Center, gym users are at risk of contracting infections. The objective of this plan is for gym users to feel more empowered and safe in their environment. While there may be individuals who feel like increased disinfecting efforts and supplies are not necessary at the Jaeger Center, what may not be a concern for one person …

Effects Of Voice Pitch On Social Perceptions Vary With Relational Mobility And Homicide Rate, Toe Aung, Et. Al

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Fundamental frequency (fo) is the most perceptually salient vocal acoustic parameter, yet little is known about how its perceptual influence varies across societies. We examined how fo affects key social perceptions and how socioecological variables modulate these effects in 2,647 adult listeners sampled from 44 locations across 22 nations. Low male fo increased men’s perceptions of formidability and prestige, especially in societies with higher homicide rates and greater relational mobility in which male intrasexual competition may be more intense and rapid identification of highstatus competitors may be exigent. High female fo increased women’s perceptions of flirtatiousness where relational mobility was …

Is The Declining Birthrate Really An Issue For The Economy?, Harsh Ramesh Pednekar, Theodore Lee, Darrion Chin

Introduction to Research Methods RSCH 202

This study aims to explore the complex implications of declining birth rates on the economy, focusing on GDP per capita as a crucial metric, and aims to uncover both potential opportunities and challenges stemming from this demographic transformation using regression analysis. Using a quantitative methodology and secondary data from OECD.stat, World Population Review, and World Bank, the study explores the relationship between declining birth rates and economic impacts. GDP per capita serves as an essential dependent variable, and it accounts for control variables such as labour force participation, literacy, and education levels, child dependence ratio, and physical capital. Past studies …

A Classical Fall Statistics Problem, Timothy L. Meyer

Cornhusker Economics

An evaluation of traditional baseball measures and suggestions for alternatives, centering on statistics related to the offensive quality of a player.

A Monte Carlo Analysis Of Nonprobability Sampling & Post Hoc Corrections, Julia Hong

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Nonprobability samples are often used in place of probability samples because the former are less trouble and less expensive. Unfortunately, it is difficult to determine how well a sample represents population parameters when using nonprobability samples. Researchers attempt to mitigate the disadvantages of nonprobability sampling by performing post hoc corrections, but this adjustment may not successfully undo the effects of nonprobability sampling. To examine these effects, a Monte Carlo simulation was conducted to create a pseudo-population from which samples were drawn. Forty-one conditions were replicated 10,000 times each, with each sample consisting of 100 observations. A post-stratification adjustment was made …

Gentrification And Crime In The Twin Cities: Insights And Challenges Through A Statistical Lens, Erin G. Franke

Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science Honors Projects

Gentrification is a complex process of urban redevelopment that typically involves an in-migration of educated people to neighborhoods experiencing a period of disinvestment. While gentrification is widely regarded for its potential to displace long-time businesses and residents of the neighborhood, its impact on crime is highly controversial. There is not a consensus on the relationship between gentrification and crime across criminological theory and past statistical studies have also shown contradictory results. Measuring gentrification on the tract level with census data, we seek to understand gentrification’s relationship with violent crime and theft in the Twin Cities. Using a Poisson model with …

A Diffusion Network Event History Estimator, Jeffrey J. Harden, Bruce A. Desmarais, Mark Brockway, Frederick J. Boehmke, Scott J. Lacombe, Fridolin Linder, Hanna Wallach

Government: Faculty Publications

Research on the diffusion of political decisions across jurisdictions typically accounts for units’ influence over each other with (1) observable measures or (2) by inferring latent network ties from past decisions. The former approach assumes that interdependence is static and perfectly captured by the data. The latter mitigates these issues but requires analytical tools that are separate from the main empirical methods for studying diffusion. As a solution, we introduce network event history analysis (NEHA), which incorporates latent network inference into conventional discrete-time event history models. We demonstrate NEHA’s unique methodological and substantive benefits in applications to policy adoption in …

Community Participation And Perspectives Of Ambondrolava Mangrove Restoration Project, Nadine Shannon

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Madagascar’s mangrove forests are intertidal ecosystems that provide numerous valuable ecosystem services but are nonetheless under pressure from large amounts of deforestation. On the southwestern coast of Madagascar, the village of Ambondrolava practices community led management of the mangrove and its resources. This research project studied the evolution of the mangrove area using GIS data, and investigated, through interviews, the relationship between the local community of Ambondrolava and the organizations that manage the mangrove ecosystem. From 2000 to 2018, the zone of the mangrove has experienced a net loss in area every year, despite reforestation efforts. Most community members interviewed …

Arousing Motives Or Eliciting Stories? On The Role Of Pictures In A Picture–Story Exercise, Philipp Schäpers, Stefan Krumm, Filip Lievens, Nikola Stenzel

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Picture–story exercises (PSE) form a popular measurement approach that has been widely used for the assessment of implicit motives. However, current theorizing offers two diverging perspectives on the role of pictures in PSEs: either to elicit stories or to arouse motives. In the current study, we tested these perspectives in an experimental design. We administered a PSE either with or without pictures. Results from N = 281 participants revealed that the experimental manipulation had a medium to large effect for the affiliation and power motive domains, but no effect for the achievement motive domain. We conclude that the herein chosen …

Institutional Design And Policy Responsiveness In Us States, Scott J. Lacombe

Government: Faculty Publications

There is significant disagreement on the moderating role of institutions on policy responsive- ness, yet overwhelmingly research in state politics has focused on single institutions. This project leverages a new aggregate scale of state institutions to evaluate if the collective insti- tutional context moderates the influence of public opinion on policy. I use a recently released latent scale of institutional context and find that high levels of accountability pressure strongly strengthen public opinion’s influence on policy for both economic and social policy, while the strength of a state’s checks and balance system is largely unrelated to policy responsiveness. These results …

Vibrio Cholerae In Rural And Urban Bangladesh, Findings From Hospital-Based Surveillance, 2000–2021, Rina Das, Sabiha Nasrin, Parag Palit, Rukaeya Amin Sobi, Al-Afroza Sultana, Soroar Hossain Khan, Md. Ahshanul Haque, Sharika Nuzhat, Tahmeed Ahmed, A. S. G. Faruque, Mohammod Jobayer Chisti

Biostatistics and Epidemiology Faculty Publications Series

With more than 100,000 cases estimated each year, Bangladesh is one of the countries with the highest number of people at risk for cholera. Moreover, Bangladesh is formulating a countrywide cholera-control plan to satisfy the GTFCC (The Global Task Force on Cholera Control) Roadmap's goals. With a particular focus on cholera trends, variance in baseline and clinical characteristics of cholera cases, and trends in antibiotic susceptibility among clinical isolates of Vibrio cholerae, we used data from facility-based surveillance systems from icddr,b’s Dhaka, and Matlab Hospitals from years 2000 to 2021. Female patients comprised 3,553 (43%) in urban and 1,099 (51.6%) …

Assessing Spurious Correlations In Big Search Data, Jesse T. Richman, Ryan J. Roberts

Political Science & Geography Faculty Publications

Big search data offers the opportunity to identify new and potentially real-time measures and predictors of important political, geographic, social, cultural, economic, and epidemiological phenomena, measures that might serve an important role as leading indicators in forecasts and nowcasts. However, it also presents vast new risks that scientists or the public will identify meaningless and totally spurious ‘relationships’ between variables. This study is the first to quantify that risk in the context of search data. We find that spurious correlations arise at exceptionally high frequencies among probability distributions examined for random variables based upon gamma (1, 1) and Gaussian random …

A Cross-Ancestry Genome-Wide Meta-Analysis, Fine-Mapping, And Gene Prioritization Approach To Characterize The Genetic Architecture Of Adiponectin, Casssandra N. Spracklen, Et. Al.

Biostatistics and Epidemiology Faculty Publications Series

No abstract provided.

Childhood And Adulthood Passive And Active Smoking, And The Abo Group As Risk Factors For Pancreatic Cancer In Women, Anne-Laure Vedie, Nasser Laouali, Amandine Gelot, Gianluca Severi, Marie-Christine Boutron-Ruault, Vinciane Rebours

Biostatistics and Epidemiology Faculty Publications Series

Objectives

Active smoking and the A blood group are associated with pancreatic adenocarcinoma (PC) risk. However, potential interactions between those risk factors and the role of passive smoking have been little investigated. We aimed to explore specific and joint associations of passive and active smoking, and effect modification by the ABO blood group in French women.

Methods

The study included 96,594 women from the E3N prospective cohort, mean age: 49 years (SD 6.7). Information on active and passive smoking was reported at inclusion and throughout follow-up. Cases were classified according to the International Classification of Diseases 10. Associations with passive …

Comparison Of Combination Methods To Create Calibrated Ensemble Forecasts For Seasonal Influenza In The U.S., Nutcha Wattanachit, Evan L. Ray, Thomas C. Mcandrew, Nicholas G. Reich

Biostatistics and Epidemiology Faculty Publications Series

The characteristics of influenza seasons vary substantially from year to year, posing challenges for public health preparation and response. Influenza forecasting is used to inform seasonal outbreak response, which can in turn potentially reduce the impact of an epidemic. The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in collaboration with external researchers, has run an annual prospective influenza forecasting exercise, known as the FluSight challenge. Uniting theoretical results from the forecasting literature with domain-specific forecasts from influenza outbreaks, we applied parametric forecast combination methods that simultaneously optimize model weights and calibrate the ensemble via a beta transformation and made …

Polarization, Media Bias, And General Opinion, Knole Ihle '25

Student Research

This article researches the relationship between three different spheres of influence: party identification, issue selection process in media, and the following changes in public opinion. This relationship was examined through a random sample of news organizations based on a specific issue. The number of articles was then documented for each newspaper and measured against the articles produced apropos to that issue in the previous year. The discrepancy in articles produced is then compared to the succeeding policy shift to determine whether or not there is a correlation between these two relationships. Regarding the relationship between Ukraine-Russia War media and proceeding …

Pandemic Fatigue Impedes Mitigation Of Covid-19 In Hong Kong, Zhanwei Du, Lin Wang, Songwei Shan, Dickson Lam, Tim K. Tsang, Jingyi Xiao, Huizhi Gao, Bingyi Yang, Sheikh Taslim Ali, Sen Pei, Isaac Chun-Hai Fung, Eric H. Y. Lau, Qiuyan Liao, Peng Wu, Lauren Ancel Meyers, Gabriel M. Leung, Benjamin Cowling

Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Environmental Health Sciences Faculty Publications

Hong Kong has implemented stringent public health and social measures (PHSMs) to curb each of the four COVID-19 epidemic waves since January 2020. The third wave between July and September 2020 was brought under control within 2 m, while the fourth wave starting from the end of October 2020 has taken longer to bring under control and lasted at least 5 mo. Here, we report the pandemic fatigue as one of the potential reasons for the reduced impact of PHSMs on transmission in the fourth wave. We contacted either 500 or 1,000 local residents through weekly random-digit dialing of landlines …

The Link Between Democratic Institutions And Population Health In The American States, Julianna Pacheco, Scott Lacombe

Government: Faculty Publications

Context: This project investigates the role of state-level institutions in explaining variation in population health in the American states. Although cross-national research has established the positive effects of democracy on population health, little attention has been given to subnational units. The authors leverage a new data set to understand how political accountability and a system of checks and balances are associated with state population health. Methods: The authors estimate error correction models and two-way fixed effects models to estimate how the strength of state-level democratic institutions is associated with infant mortality rates, life expectancy, and midlife mortality. Findings: The authors …

Reply To Response By Fbi Laboratory Filed In Illinois V. Winfield And Affidavit By Biederman Et Al. (2022) Filed In Us V. Kaevon Sutton (2018 Cf1 009709), Susan Vanderplas, Kori Khan, Heike Hofmann, Alicia Carriquiry

Department of Statistics: Faculty Publications

1 Preliminaries

1.1 Scope

The aim of this document is to respond to issues raised in Federal Bureau of Investigation¹ and Alex Biedermann, Bruce Budowle & Christophe Champod.²

1.2 Conflict of Interest

We are statisticians employed at public institutions of higher education (Iowa State University and University of Nebraska, Lincoln) and have not been paid for our time or expertise when preparing either this response or the original affidavit.³ We provide this information as a public service and as scientists and researchers in this area.

1.3 Organization

The rest of the document precedes as follows: we begin …

Forecasting Country Conflict Using Statistical Learning Methods, Sarah Neumann, Darryl K. Ahner, Raymond R. Hill

Faculty Publications

Purpose — This paper aims to examine whether changing the clustering of countries within a United States Combatant Command (COCOM) area of responsibility promotes improved forecasting of conflict. Design/methodology/approach — In this paper statistical learning methods are used to create new country clusters that are then used in a comparative analysis of model-based conflict prediction. Findings — In this study a reorganization of the countries assigned to specific areas of responsibility are shown to provide improvements in the ability of models to predict conflict. Research limitations/implications — The study is based on actual historical data and is purely data driven. …

Unrestricted Factor Analysis: A Powerful Alternative To Confirmatory Factor Analysis, Jan-Benedict E.M. Steenkamp, Alberto Maydeu-Olivares

Faculty Publications

The gold standard for modeling multiple indicator measurement data is confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), which has many statistical advantages over traditional exploratory factor analysis (EFA). In most CFA applications, items are assumed to be pure indicators of the construct they intend to measure. However, despite our best efforts, this is often not the case. Cross-loadings incorrectly set to zero can only be expressed through the correlations between the factors, leading to biased factor correlations and to biased structural (regression) parameter estimates. This article introduces a third approach, which has emerged in the psychometric literature, viz., unrestricted factor analysis (UFA). UFA …

The Biggest Loser: How Tanking In Professional Sports Impacts Fan Perception, Julia Ayres

Honors Projects in Mathematics

Professional sports teams are adored nationwide for their talents and the pride they bring to their city for their efforts. However, not all teams take this responsibility seriously and will lose on purpose, or tank, to gain a higher draft pick in the future. Although the long-term goals of tanking are to help the organization, many people take issue with athletes not putting in their best efforts in every game. Teams in both the NBA and NFL are guilty of tanking to gain better draft picks but not all have found success in this process. This leads to important questions …

Relationship Between Higher Education And Health Insurance Coverage And Healthcare Utilization For Black Or African American Individuals, Emma Revoir

Psychology Student Works

Higher education may decrease mortality due to higher income and health insurance availability (Buckles et al., 2016). Education can increase understanding and utilizing health insurance (Gallo et al., 2020). There is a gap in how this relationship affects racial minorities. This study aims to understand how health insurance is affected by education level for Black or African American individuals.

The Association Between Sibling Relationships And Personality, Rebecca Ramsey

Psychology Student Works

Differences in self perception (specifically aggression) was discovered in participants with siblings, and no difference of intelligence, outgoing personalities, creativity, competitiveness and family orientation (Van Volkom, Guerguis, & Kramer, 2017). Sisters were found to have more empathy than the brothers along with higher intimacy, knowledge, and emotional support (Walęcka-Matyja, 2017). There is a gap in my research between sibling jealousy and depression, sibling negativity, and intimacy in young adulthood (Hamwey & Whiteman, 2020). My study examines the similarity of personality to siblings. Some personality traits may include jealousy, outgoingness, competitiveness, and creativity.

How Quality Of Paternal Relationship Impacts Depression Development In Adulthood, Rachel Lane

Psychology Student Works

Previous studies show that paternal involvement directly correlates to a decrease in the child’s probability of developing a mental illness (O’Gara, et.al. 2019). Research shows, the more supportive and the more affection a parent gives, the less likely a child is to develop depressive tendencies (Del Barrio, et. al. 2016) There is a gap in investigating whether or not having a loving father postpones the age at which someone is diagnosed with depression. This study provides insight into paternal closeness and the age at which someone is diagnosed with depression.

The Association Between Promiscuity And Marital Satisfaction, Shelby Kate Christopher

Psychology Student Works

Research has suggested that premarital cohabitation is linked to a heightened risk of divorce and dissatisfaction if it occurs with someone other than the marriage partner (Teachman, 2004). The number of partners is linked to marital dissatisfaction for both men and women (Legkauskas & Stankevičienė, 2008). Involvement in church groups is linked to a 5x increase in likelihood of abstinence (Paul et al, 2000). Previous studies have used small sample sizes with little diversity and few men. However, my research will use a large, diverse sample size with both men and women.

The Association Between Religiosity And Alcohol Use In Adolescents, Daphny Vang

Psychology Student Works

Research has found that the age and strength of religion directly correlate to the level of alcohol consumption(Mason & Windle, 2002). Previous studies show that adult women with stronger religious beliefs consume less alcohol compared to those with weaker religious beliefs (Mattila & et al., 2001). There is a gap in investigating the relationship between religiosity and alcohol use in adolescents. This study provides insight into the relationship between religiosity and alcohol consumption with adolescents.

The Relationship Between Adults Education Level And Their Mental Health Status, Kelsey Bergan

Psychology Student Works

Research has shown that those with a higher education are more likely to seek out sources to help them with mental disorders (Ibrahim, et al., 2019; Neimeyer, et al., 2011). Previous studies have found that students with a lower GPA show signs of depression, anxiety and eating disorders (Eisenberg, Globerstein & Hunt, 2009). There is a gap in investigating the relationship between education level and an adult’s mental health experiences. This study will provide insight to the relationship between an adults education level and their mental health.