Statistics and Probability Commons^™

An Application Of The Pagerank Algorithm To Ncaa Football Team Rankings, Morgan Majors

Honors Theses

We investigate the use of Google’s PageRank algorithm to rank sports teams. The PageRank algorithm is used in web searches to return a list of the websites that are of most interest to the user. The structure of the NCAA FBS football schedule is used to construct a network with a similar structure to the world wide web. Parallels are drawn between pages that are linked in the world wide web with the results of a contest between two sports teams. The teams under consideration here are the members of the 2021 Football Bowl Subdivision. We achieve a total ordering …

Defining Characteristics That Lead To Cost-Efficient Veteran Nba Free Agent Signings, David Mccain

Honors Projects in Mathematics

Throughout the history of the NBA, decisions regarding the signing of free agents have been riddled with complexity. Franchises are tasked with finding out what players will serve as optimal free agent signings prior to seeing them perform within the framework of their team. This study hypothesizes that the adequacy of an NBA free agent signing can be modeled and predicted through the implementation of a machine learning model. The model will learn the necessary information using training and testing data sets that include various player biometrics, game statistics, and financial information. The application of this machine learning model will …

Using A Distributive Approach To Model Insurance Loss, Kayla Kippes

Student Research Submissions

Insurance loss is an unpredicted event that stands at the forefront of the insurance industry. Loss in insurance represents the costs or expenses incurred due to a claim. An insurance claim is a request for the insurance company to pay for damage caused to an individual’s property. Loss can be measured by how much money (the dollar amount) has been paid out by the insurance company to repair the damage or it can be measured by the number of claims (claim count) made to the insurance company. Insured events include property damage due to fire, theft, flood, a car accident, …

Electric Vehicle Uptake: What Factors Are Motivating The Shift For College-Aged And Older Groups?, Jake Cardines

Honors Projects in Mathematics

Electric vehicles (EVs) arguably are the most quickly expanding form of transportation as the world races toward a greener future with advanced technology and reduced reliance on fossil fuels. This study analyzes various expected inputs to motivating consumers of particular age groups to purchase EVs, including examination of how the idea of EV ownership is currently perceived and testing which factors influence it positively and negatively. Data collected from 113 survey respondents serves as the basis for determining the responsiveness of potential future EV owners to variables such as vehicle brand and charging availability, electric range, costs associated with purchase …

Length Bias Estimation Of Small Businesses Lifetime, Simeng Li

Honors Theses

Small businesses, particularly restaurants, play a crucial role in the economy by generating employment opportunities, boosting tourism, and contributing to the local economy. However, accurately estimating their lifetimes can be challenging due to the presence of length bias, which occurs when the likelihood of sampling any particular restaurant's closure is influenced by its duration in operation. To address the issue, this study conducts goodness-of-fit tests on exponential/gamma family distributions and employs the Kaplan-Meier method to more accurately estimate the average lifetime of restaurants in Carytown. By providing insights into the challenges of estimating the lifetimes of small businesses, this study …

El Final Report: Undergraduate Summer Research Internships, Sophie Wu

SASAH 4th Year Capstone and Other Projects: Publications

In her final report, Sophie Wu discusses her two Undergraduate Summer Research Internships at Western University: the first in the Statistics and Actuarial Science department, concerning microinsurance, and the second, in the Mathematics department, concerning computational neuroscience.

Changing Nfl Playoff Overtime Rules To Create Equal Opportunities To Win A Game, Matthew Silvia

Honors Projects in Mathematics

The NFL has attempted to create fair overtime rules over the course of the past decade; however, this study is interested in determining what playoff overtime rule (or rules) could the NFL implement to result in outcomes where both teams have a relatively equal chance of winning a game. This study aims to find which overtime rules work best at minimizing the differences between teams who possess the ball first versus teams that kick the ball off to start an overtime period. By collecting various NFL statistics from ESPN.com and FantasyOutsiders.com, this study hopes to run multiple simulations of different …

Utilizing Markov Chains To Estimate Allele Progression Through Generations, Ronit Gandhi

Honors Theses

All populations display patterns in allele frequencies over time. Some alleles cease to exist, while some grow to become the norm. These frequencies can shift or stay constant based on the conditions the population lives in. If in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, the allele frequencies stay constant. Most populations, however, have bias from environmental factors, sexual preferences, other organisms, etc. We propose a stochastic Markov chain model to study allele progression across generations. In such a model, the allele frequencies in the next generation depend only on the frequencies in the current one.

We use this model to track a recessive allele …

The Efficacy Of The Covid-19 Vaccine In Mississippi, Ilyse Miriam Levy

Honors Theses

The Efficacy of The COVID-19 Vaccine in Mississippi

(Under the direction of Dr. Xin Dang)

By tracking and analyzing fifty-three weeks of COVID-19 data, this thesis analyzes the efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccine within the State of Mississippi. Over the course of these fifty-three weeks, I have also been able to calculate the confidence intervals for vaccination efficacy and the risk reduction due to vaccination by using data regarding the correlations between deaths and vaccination status, provided to me by the Mississippi Office of Epidemiology. My analysis demonstrates that the COVID-19 vaccine is effective not only in Mississippi but also …

Mathematical Modeling Suggests Cooperation Of Plant-Infecting Viruses, Joshua Miller, Vitaly V. Ganusov, Tessa Burch-Smith

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

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 …

Vampires And Other Diseases: Stochastic Infection Dynamics Of Small Populations, Marijn Jaarsma

Honors Projects in Science and Technology

Mathematical models are powerful tools often applied in the field of epidemiology. The type and shape of the model will differ between different types of diseases. In this study, stochastic dynamical models are applied to the entertaining example of vampires, and the results of this analysis are compared to real-life diseases with small populations of infected. The data used comes from pop-culture depictions of vampires in literature, television shows, movies, and fan pages associated with these depictions. The aim of this study is to serve as an educational tool for modeling diseases with small populations to predict and control the …

Contributions To The Teaching And Learning Of Fluid Mechanics, Ashwin Vaidya

Department of Mathematics Facuty Scholarship and Creative Works

This issue showcases a compilation of papers on fluid mechanics (FM) education, covering different sub topics of the subject. The success of the first volume [1] prompted us to consider another follow-up special issue on the topic, which has also been very successful in garnering an impressive variety of submissions. As a classical branch of science, the beauty and complexity of fluid dynamics cannot be overemphasized. This is an extremely well-studied subject which has now become a significant component of several major scientific disciplines ranging from aerospace engineering, astrophysics, atmospheric science (including climate modeling), biological and biomedical science …

We’Re Here To Get You There: A Statistical Analysis Of Bridgewater State University’S Transit System, Abigail Adams

Honors Program Theses and Projects

Bridgewater State University first established its on-campus transportation service in January of 1984. While it began only running as an on-campus service for students throughout the day, the service grew to expand by offering an off-campus connection to the neighboring city of Brockton and absorbed the night service system from the campus safety team. As BSU Transit continues to grow, the organization is seeking ways to improve their overall service and better prepare their fleet and driver pool to accommodate this growth. The purpose of this research is to analyze trends among the data collected by BSU Transit and assist …

An Exploratory Analysis Of The Bgsu Learning Commons Student Usage Data, Emily Eskuri

Honors Projects

The purpose of this study was to explore past student usage data in individualized tutoring sessions from the Learning Commons from two academic years. The Bowling Green State University (BGSU) Learning Commons is a learning assistance center that offers various services, such as individualized tutoring, math assistance, writing assistance, study hours, and academic coaching. There have been limited research studies into how big data and analytics can have an impact in higher education, especially research utilizing predictive analytics.

This project applied analytics to individualized tutoring data in the Learning Commons to create a better understanding of why those trends happen …

Option Implied Volatility's Predictability On Monthly Stock Returns, Hung T. Dao

Senior Independent Study Theses

Since the trading of options is based on underlying stocks, it is reasonable to assume that information from the options market can be used to explain the returns in the stock market. Our independent study investigates the relationship between options implied volatility and stock returns. Previous studies have found significant results in using implied volatility in predicting stock returns. This paper provides a discussion of such studies, the theoretical framework for the research topic, and the Black-Scholes model, which is famous for its application in implied volatility calculation. Monthly returns of 20 large US firms are regressed against implied volatility …

Statistical And Machine Learning Approaches To Depressive Disorders Among Adults In The United States: From Factor Discovery To Prediction Evaluation, Minhwa Lee

Senior Independent Study Theses

According to the National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH), depressive disorders (or major depression) are considered one of the most common and serious health risks in the United States. Our study focuses on extracting non-medical factors of depressive disorders diagnosis, such as overall health states, health risk behaviors, demography, and healthcare access, using the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) data set collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in 2018.

We set the two objectives of our study about depressive disorders diagnosis in the United States as follows. First, we aim to utilize machine learning algorithms …

Mathematical Modeling: Instructor And Student Resources, Marnie Phipps, Patty Wagner

Mathematics Ancillary Materials

This collection of student and instructor materials for Mathematical Modeling contains lesson plans, lecture slides, homework, learning goals, and student notes for the following major topics:

• Linear Functions
• Quadratic Functions
• Exponential Functions
• Logarithmic Functions

This is a materials update for a collection of materials created for a Round Nine ALG Textbook Transformation Grant.

Teaching A University Course On The Mathematics Of Gambling, Stewart N. Ethier, Fred M. Hoppe

UNLV Gaming Research & Review Journal

Courses on the mathematics of gambling have been offered by a number of colleges and universities, and for a number of reasons. In the past 15 years, at least seven potential textbooks for such a course have been published. In this article we objectively compare these books for their probability content, their gambling content, and their mathematical level, to see which ones might be most suitable, depending on student interests and abilities. This is not a book review (e.g., none of the books is recommended over others) but rather an essay offering advice about which topics to include in a …

Mathematics Versus Statistics, Mindy B. Capaldi

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

Mathematics and statistics are both important and useful subjects, but the former has maintained prominence in the American education system. On the other hand, statistics is more prevalent in daily life and is an increasingly marketable subject to know. This article gives a personal history of one mathematician’s bumpy road to learning and teaching statistics. Additionally, arguments for how and why to include statistics in the K-12 and college curricula are provided.

Data Mining And Machine Learning To Improve Northern Florida’S Foster Care System, Daniel Oldham, Nathan Foster, Mihhail Berezovski

Beyond: Undergraduate Research Journal

The purpose of this research project is to use statistical analysis, data mining, and machine learning techniques to determine identifiable factors in child welfare service records that could lead to a child entering the foster care system multiple times. This would allow us the capability of accurately predicting a case’s outcome based on these factors. We were provided with eight years of data in the form of multiple spreadsheets from Partnership for Strong Families (PSF), a child welfare services organization based in Gainesville, Florida, who is contracted by the Florida Department for Children and Families (DCF). This data contained a …

A Self-Contained Course In The Mathematical Theory Of Statistics For Scientists & Engineers With An Emphasis On Predictive Regression Modeling & Financial Applications., Tim Smith

Timothy Smith

Preface & Acknowledgments

This textbook is designed for a higher level undergraduate, perhaps even first year graduate, course for engineering or science students who are interested to gain knowledge of using data analysis to make predictive models. While there is no statistical perquisite knowledge required to read this book, due to the fact that the study is designed for the reader to truly understand the underlying theory rather than just learn how to read computer output, it would be best read with some familiarity of elementary statistics. The book is self-contained and the only true perquisite knowledge is a solid …

A Self-Contained Course In The Mathematical Theory Of Statistics For Scientists & Engineers With An Emphasis On Predictive Regression Modeling & Financial Applications., Tim Smith

Open Access Textbooks

Preface & Acknowledgments

This textbook is designed for a higher level undergraduate, perhaps even first year graduate, course for engineering or science students who are interested to gain knowledge of using data analysis to make predictive models. While there is no statistical perquisite knowledge required to read this book, due to the fact that the study is designed for the reader to truly understand the underlying theory rather than just learn how to read computer output, it would be best read with some familiarity of elementary statistics. The book is self-contained and the only true perquisite knowledge is a solid …

Cramer Type Moderate Deviations For Random Fields And Mutual Information Estimation For Mixed-Pair Random Variables, Aleksandr Beknazaryan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation we first study Cramer type moderate deviation for partial sums of random fields by applying the conjugate method. In 1938 Cramer published his results on large deviations of sums of i.i.d. random variables after which a lot of research has been done on establishing Cramer type moderate and large deviation theorems for different types of random variables and for various statistics. In particular results have been obtained for independent non-identically distributed random variables for the sum of independent random to estimate the mutual information between two random variables. The estimates enjoy a central limit theorem under some …

Under The Influence, Leonardo Cavicchio

Honors Projects in Mathematics

The purpose of this Honors Capstone entitled Under the Influence is to assess the validity of claims concerning the possible influence of roommates on one another, concerning alcohol on college campuses. This will be done by examining data collected in a prior study conducted over a two-year period. This analysis will focus on how alcohol consumption changes in correlation with the personality factors of roommates over an extended period of time. This secondary analysis of de-identified data will focus on primary and secondary subquestions. The primary question that will be addressed with the data set collected from the University of …

Modeling Multimodal Failure Effects Of Complex Systems Using Polyweibull Distribution, Daniel A. Timme

Theses and Dissertations

The Department of Defense (DoD) enlists multiple complex systems across each of their departments. Between the aging systems going through an overhaul and emerging new systems, quality assurance to complete the mission and secure the nation‘s objectives is an absolute necessity. The U.S. Air Force‘s increased interest in Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA) and the Space Warfighting domain are current examples of complex systems that must maintain high reliability and sustainability in order to complete missions moving forward. DoD systems continue to grow in complexity with an increasing number of components and parts in more complex arrangements. Bathtub-shaped hazard functions arise …

Introductory Statistics, Barbara Illowsky, Susan Dean

Open Access Textbooks

Introductory Statistics follows scope and sequence requirements of a one-semester introduction to statistics course and is geared toward students majoring in fields other than math or engineering. The text assumes some knowledge of intermediate algebra and focuses on statistics application over theory. Introductory Statistics includes innovative practical applications that make the text relevant and accessible, as well as collaborative exercises, technology integration problems, and statistics labs.

Rock Paper Scissors And Evolutionary Game Theory, Christian Cordova, Rudolf Jovero, Evan Thomas

Math 365 Class Projects

In Rock Paper Scissors (RPS), three different "species" compete, but no single species has a dominating strategy. In evolutionary game theory, replicator equations model population densities over time. When a mutation is introduced, they are called "replicator-mutator" equations. Using the replicator-mutator equation in [1] we have shown how population density of three species change.

Analyzing The Probabilistic Spread Of A Virus On Various Networks, Teagan Decusatis

Senior Projects Spring 2018

In this project we model the spread of a virus on networks as a probabilistic process. We assume the virus breaks out at one vertex on a network and then spreads to neighboring vertices in each time step with a certain probability. Our objective is to find probability distributions that describe the uncertain number of infected vertices at a given time step. The networks we consider are paths, cycles, star graphs, complete graphs, and broom graphs. Through the use of Markov chains and Jordan Normal Form we analyze the probability distribution of these graphs, characterizing the transition matrix for each …

The Most Important Statistics In Football, Jacob Holmen

Essential Studies UNDergraduate Showcase

This research is based on the Five Factors that were devised by Bill Connelly of SBNation. The Five Factors of football include Explosiveness, Efficiency, Field Position, Finishing Drives, and Turnovers. Each factor is composed of associated statistics that when put together make up the most important statistics in football. This research includes the analysis of all 857 FBS (the highest level of NCAA Division I football) games from the 2016 season. Data was analyzed through the use of an Excel spreadsheet. Five different statistics were looked at, each associated with one of the Five Factors. The statistics include Yards per …