Applied Statistics Commons^™

A Statistical Study Into The Relationship Between The Student Age And Their Academic Performance, Umangkumar Patel, Akeisha Belgrave

Harrisburg University Research Symposium: Highlighting Research, Innovation, & Creativity

This project will conduct a research in order to find out the relationship between the age of a student and their academic performance. This project will survey at least 100 students. (Class Project)

Using Short Bursts To Optimize Redistricting In Georgia, Vedika Vishweshwar

CMC Senior Theses

Identifying extreme outliers in large state spaces is a difficult prob-
lem. I consider this problem in the context of finding political district-
ing plans that maximize the number of districts in which the majority
of the population is from a minority group, such as African Americans.
Since the set of all possible districting plans is enormous and unfeasi-
ble to examine in practice, this paper proposes a sampling method to
find these outlying plans. Specifically, this paper experiments with short
bursts in the context of minority voting rights in Georgia. Short bursts
are a type of Markov Chain in …

Statistical Theory For Specialized Linear Regression Adjustment Methods Compared To Multiple Linear Regression In The Presence And Absence Of Interaction Effects, Leon Su

Theses and Dissertations--Statistics

When building models to investigate outcomes and variables of interest, researchers often want to adjust for other variables. There is a variety of ways that these adjustments are performed. In this work, we will consider four approaches to adjustment utilized by researchers in various fields. We will compare the efficacy of these methods to what we call the ”true model method”, fitting a multiple linear regression model in which adjustment variables are model covariates. Our goal is to show that these adjustment methods have inferior performance to the true model method by comparing model parameter estimates, power, type I error, …

Deriving The Distributions And Developing Methods Of Inference For R2-Type Measures, With Applications To Big Data Analysis, Gregory S. Hawk

Theses and Dissertations--Statistics

As computing capabilities and cloud-enhanced data sharing has accelerated exponentially in the 21st century, our access to Big Data has revolutionized the way we see data around the world, from healthcare to investments to manufacturing to retail and supply-chain. In many areas of research, however, the cost of obtaining each data point makes more than just a few observations impossible. While machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) are improving our ability to make predictions from datasets, we need better statistical methods to improve our ability to understand and translate models into meaningful and actionable insights.

A central goal in the …

Analysis Of Minor League Rule Changes Effect On Stolen Bases, Zachary Houghtaling

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This study uses various statistical analyses to evaluate the justification of rule changes for Major League Baseball that were implemented within the Minor Leagues during the 2021 minor league season. The primary focus of the study is predicting how some of these Minor League rule changes could affect the stolen base success rate and the number of attempts per game within the Major Leagues. A survey was conducted to evaluate how fans feel about stolen bases within the current game and if rules should be altered to increase the number of stolen bases that occur. Additionally, recorded Major and Minor …

Role Of Inhibition And Spiking Variability In Ortho- And Retronasal Olfactory Processing, Michelle F. Craft

Theses and Dissertations

Odor perception is the impetus for important animal behaviors, most pertinently for feeding, but also for mating and communication. There are two predominate modes of odor processing: odors pass through the front of nose (ortho) while inhaling and sniffing, or through the rear (retro) during exhalation and while eating and drinking. Despite the importance of olfaction for an animal’s well-being and specifically that ortho and retro naturally occur, it is unknown whether the modality (ortho versus retro) is transmitted to cortical brain regions, which could significantly instruct how odors are processed. Prior imaging studies show different …

Smoking, Alcohol Consumption, And Depression In Association With Incidence Of Type 2 Diabetes Among Mexican Americans In Starr County, Texas, Gabriela Rubannelsonkumar

Honors Program Theses and Research Projects

Previous studies on conditions like obesity, hypertension, and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) have explored the correlations between them and various other human conditions, including aortic stiffness, left ventricular hypertrophy and sleep apnea, as they predict possibilities of developing certain diseases in Mexican Americans. This study aims to observe the correlation between lifestyle decisions that could relate to the onset of the depression in normal, prediabetic, and diabetic individuals. These include smoking habits and alcohol consumption. Many papers have previously conducted research on these lifestyle habits as they relate to obesity, hypertension, diabetes, however, have done so in a singular …

Estimation Analysis For The Seir Model With Stochastic Perturbation For The Covid-19 Outbreak In Bogotá, Viswanathan Arunachalam, Andres Rios-Gutierrez

Annual Symposium on Biomathematics and Ecology Education and Research

No abstract provided.

Mathematical Modeling And Analysis Of Covid-19 Epidemic With Vaccination, Caitlin Seibel, Tina Huang, Jackson Reisman, Erika Johanna Martinez Salinas, Viswanathan Arunachalam, Moatlhodi Kgosimore, Anuj Mubayi, Padmanabhan Seshaiyer, Allen Bone Sehunelo

Annual Symposium on Biomathematics and Ecology Education and Research

No abstract provided.

Market Research: How To Keep And Gain Customers, Chris Mccall

Symposium of Student Scholars

Customer-centered market research is essential to the creation and management of successful marketing campaigns. A company that understands their customers will be able to provide those customers with products and services that fit their needs better than the competition, and ultimately increase profits. My research focuses on a database containing customer information for a telecommunications company called Telco. Within this research, I will focus on a number of customer attributes including demographics, services provided, payment methods, contract lengths, monthly charges, and tenure with the company. Considering how these attributes relate to one another will give me a better understanding of …

Food Deserts: Hungry For Answers, Lawren Cumberbatch

Symposium of Student Scholars

In 2010, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported that 23.5 million people in the United States live in food deserts. As defined by the USDA, a “food desert” is a neighborhood that lacks healthy food sources. This can be measured by distance to a store, number of stores in an area, individual-level resources such as family income or vehicle availability, and neighborhood-level resources such as availability of public transportation. Past research provides evidence that food deserts are especially likely to occur in communities heavily populated by minorities. As a Black Indian pre-med student aiming to join the world …

Determining Malignancy: Can Mammogram Results Help Predict The Diagnosis Of Breast Tumors?, Taylor Behrens

Symposium of Student Scholars

Even with advancements in treatment and preventative care, breast cancer remains an epidemic claiming more than 40,000 American male and female lives each year. The mammogram dataset that I am analyzing was initially complied in the early 1990s by a team from the University of Wisconsin - Madison. Past research diagnoses breast cancer from fine-needle aspirates. My research focuses on predicting whether we can determine breast cancer diagnoses without the use of invasive procedures and, in particular, whether we can predict breast cancer based on mammogram data. Do measures of gray-scale texture, radius, concavity, perimeter, compactness, area, and smoothness of …

Accidental Overdoses: Insights To Aid In Prevention, Annabel Nganga

Symposium of Student Scholars

Having lost a friend six years ago to an accidental cocaine overdose, I am very passionate about spreading awareness of accidental drug overdoses that have affected thousands of families countrywide. According to past research, deaths resulting from opiates specifically have been on the rise, and a significant number of deaths in the United States for those below fifty years are caused by drug overdoses. Data exists indicating which states have more overdoses. The data set I will be using includes variables on race, sex, age, drug with which person overdosed, location of the overdose, ultimate cause of death and year …

Death By Police: When “Protecting And Serving” Goes Wrong, Hesper Mallis

Symposium of Student Scholars

The recent cases of law enforcement using lethal force in the United States have gained massive public attention. My dataset is from the Mapping Police Violence website. The website’s focus was to create a heat map to display where police killings occurred most frequently. The website has a dataset with information on 7,664 deaths of suspects. The variables in the dataset include age, sex and race of the suspect; geographic location; alleged threat level; alleged weapon; cause of death; and criminal charges against the officer. In addition, the variables include whether the individual had a mental illness, was armed or …

Are There Predictors Of A Running Back’S Success?, Joshua Price

Symposium of Student Scholars

People who analyze football have concentrated in the past on a running back’s 40-yard dash, shuffle, broad jump, vertical jump, and bench press measures. My research will test if the following variables can predict a running back’s success in the NFL: height, weight, conference, offensive line ranking for their team, the running back’s total yards for the season, their average yards for each attempt, the number of times the running back has entered the end zone for a touchdown that season, the running back’s time average time behind the line of scrimmage (TLOS), the percentage of times the running back …

Sources And Aftermaths Of Pipeline Related Leaks And Spills, Justin Smith

Symposium of Student Scholars

The escape of oil and other hazardous materials have been shown to pollute and destroy ecosystems. As an aspiring chemist, I am adamant about the secure handling and transportation of oil and other hazardous materials. In the past, researchers have concentrated on oil’s high viscosity. Oil’s high viscosity physically smothers wildlife, affecting their ability to continue critical functions such as respiration, feeding, and thermoregulation. My research focuses on the source of these oil spills, as well as natural gas leaks, for the purpose of risk assessment. In addition, I compare recovery efforts based on the cause of the leak/spill, the …

On The Front Lines Of Fire: How Do We Save Their Lives?, Cathrine Jatta

Symposium of Student Scholars

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) reports that the United States depends on about 1.1 million firefighters to protect its citizens and property from fire. NIOSH adds that approximately 336,000 are career firefighters; 812,000 are volunteers; and 80 to 100 die in the line of duty each year. NIOSH investigates each fatality individually for the cause and prevention. In contrast, my research will look at a complete dataset of 2005 firefighter fatalities and see if any of the following variables may predict firefighter death: age, cause of death, property type, type of duty (e.g. on-duty, training), and …

Cervical Cancer: Are There Ways To Reduce The Risks?, Madelyn Dorn

Symposium of Student Scholars

History has shown us that when caught early, cervical cancer is curable. Past research has found that the sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), herpes and human papillomavirus (HPV), have been associated with cervical cancer. In contrast, my dataset on 859 women has many more STDs and lifestyle choices compiled on 36 variables. The diagnoses in the dataset are many: cervical condylomatosis, vaginal condylomatosis, vulvo-perineral condylomatosis, syphilis, pelvic inflammatory disease, genital herpes, molluscum contagiosum, acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), hepatitis B, HPV, and cervical cancer. In addition to the demographic variable on age, there are many lifestyle choice …

Marijuana Arrests In Toronto Canada: A Look Into The Canadian Criminal Justice System, Steven Tully

Symposium of Student Scholars

Marijuana related drug offenses made up fifty-eight percent of all Controlled Drugs and Substances Act offenses in Canada in 2016. On October 17, 2018, Canada legalized marijuana. As part of the efforts to legalize marijuana, descriptive statistics of single variables, like the age of the arrestees and the number of people arrested per year, were reported by the Toronto Star newspaper. The dataset analyzed in this research predates the legalization of marijuana and was collected from 1997 to 2002 on 5,226 individuals arrested in Toronto, Canada for simple possession of small quantities of marijuana. When an offender was arrested for …

Who Is Next? Evaluating Factors That May Contribute To Heart Failure, Davon Broadwater

Symposium of Student Scholars

Cardiovascular diseases are the number one causes of death globally, and for African Americans those risks are even higher. As an African American university student studying Biology, I am passionate about researching the diseases that affect my race. Current research states that behavioral factors such as obesity, tobacco use, unhealthy diet, and harmful use of alcohol should be avoided. I have chosen to research predictors of what helps patients survive if they already have heart failure. Heart failure develops gradually, where the heart becomes weaker over time and has trouble pumping blood to nourish the cells in the body. Data …

Eradicating Zebra Mussels: What Works?, Elijah Davies

Symposium of Student Scholars

The invasion of U.S lakes and rivers by the invasive species of zebra mussels called Dreissena polymorpha has caused catastrophic harm to the local ecosystem by reproducing and outcompeting native mussel species as well as harm to pipes leading into water sources by binding to surfaces and reproducing to the point that the mussels clog pipes. In addition, recreation areas must be closed due to the sharp shells making areas unusable. In the past, research has focused on individual molluscicides and their eradication of zebra mussels, as well as their effect on native flora and fauna. My research will contrast …

Bias In Police Shootings: Is It Just An Opinion?, Phuong Ho

Symposium of Student Scholars

The claims of racism have drawn public attention toward police brutality and its impact on minorities. Is this just an opinion or is there any statistical evidence? Recent studies from The Atlantic have investigated the average age and ethnicity of victims from police killings in 2015-2016. As an Asian-American, I am motivated to examine the issue of police killings among races and other demographics to find any bias that is present. Using the dataset of 2,204 victims of police killings (2015-2016) collected by The Guardian, I will examine the following variables for bias: age, cause of death, armed/unarmed, race/ethnicity, and …

Do Environmental Toxins Predict Violent Crimes?, Tyler Stahl

Symposium of Student Scholars

Do chemical pollutants that persistent in the environment and bioaccumulate in the body affect human health and behavior? Could these Persistent, Bioaccumulative, and Toxic (PBT) chemicals play a role in the cause of violent crimes due to deterioration of mental and cognitive functions? In the past, Mercury, a PBT chemical, has been shown in salmon to be associated with aggression. Could similar aggression occur in humans exposed to mercury through a toxic spill? Two sources of data are utilized in this analysis. The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Annual Toxic Release Inventory publishes data on toxic releases into the environment and …

Bayesian Variable Selection Strategies In Longitudinal Mixture Models And Categorical Regression Problems., Md Nazir Uddin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this work, we seek to develop a variable screening and selection method for Bayesian mixture models with longitudinal data. To develop this method, we consider data from the Health and Retirement Survey (HRS) conducted by University of Michigan. Considering yearly out-of-pocket expenditures as the longitudinal response variable, we consider a Bayesian mixture model with $K$ components. The data consist of a large collection of demographic, financial, and health-related baseline characteristics, and we wish to find a subset of these that impact cluster membership. An initial mixture model without any cluster-level predictors is fit to the data through an MCMC …

Characterizing The Northern Hemisphere Circumpolar Vortex Through Space And Time, Nazla Bushra

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This hemispheric-scale, steering atmospheric circulation represented by the circumpolar vortices (CPVs) are the middle- and upper-tropospheric wind belts circumnavigating the poles. Variability in the CPV area, shape, and position are important topics in geoenvironmental sciences because of the many links to environmental features. However, a means of characterizing the CPV has remained elusive. The goal of this research is to (i) identify the Northern Hemisphere CPV (NHCPV) and its morphometric characteristics, (ii) understand the daily characteristics of NHCPV area and circularity over time, (iii) identify and analyze spatiotemporal variability in the NHCPV’s centroid, and (iv) analyze how CPV features relate …

Guidelines For Regression Analysis In Sas And R: A Case Study, Sarah Milligan

Honors Program Theses and Projects

When a player is a free agent, an individual who is able to sign to any team, one wonders what their best option is. Will signing with Team A or Team B provide them with the largest salary? What factors will affect their salary the most? Does last year’s statistics have a strong impact on next year’s salary? These questions can be answered by performing a regression analysis on previous years data. The primary focus of this project is to determine the most important variables related to an NBA salary. Likewise, the statistical programs SAS and R will be compared …

Cointegration And Statistical Arbitrage Of Precious Metals, Judge Van Horn

Finance Undergraduate Honors Theses

When talking about financial instruments correlation is often thrown around as a measure of the relation between two securities. An often more useful or tradeable measure is cointegration. Cointegration is the measure of two securities tendency to revert to an average price over time. In other words, cointegration ignores directionality and only cares about the distance between two securities. For a mean reversion strategy such as statistical arbitrage cointegration proves to be a far more reliable statistical measure of mean reversion, and while it is more reliable than correlation it still has its own problems. One thing to consider is …

Sars-Cov-2 Pandemic Analytical Overview With Machine Learning Predictability, Anthony Tanaydin, Jingchen Liang, Daniel W. Engels

SMU Data Science Review

Understanding diagnostic tests and examining important features of novel coronavirus (COVID-19) infection are essential steps for controlling the current pandemic of 2020. In this paper, we study the relationship between clinical diagnosis and analytical features of patient blood panels from the US, Mexico, and Brazil. Our analysis confirms that among adults, the risk of severe illness from COVID-19 increases with pre-existing conditions such as diabetes and immunosuppression. Although more than eight months into pandemic, more data have become available to indicate that more young adults were getting infected. In addition, we expand on the definition of COVID-19 test and discuss …

Statistical Approaches For Estimation And Comparison Of Brain Functional Connectivity, Jifang Zhao

Theses and Dissertations

Drug addiction can lead to many health-related problems and social concerns. Functional connectivity obtained from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data promotes a variety of fundamental understandings in such association. Due to its complex correlation structure and large dimensionality, the modeling and analysis of the functional connectivity from neuroimage are challenging. By proposing a spatio-temporal model for multi-subject neuroimage data, we incorporate voxel-level spatio-temporal dependencies of whole-brain measurements to improve the accuracy of statistical inference. To tackle large-scale spatio-temporal neuroimage data, we develop a computationally efficient algorithm to estimate the parameters. Our method is used to identify functional connectivity and …

Investigations Into The Genetics Of Mixed Pathologies In Dementia, Adam Dugan

Theses and Dissertations--Epidemiology and Biostatistics

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is an irreversible, progressive brain disorder that leads to a loss of memory and thinking skills. While tremendous progress has been made in our understanding of the genetics underlying AD, currently known genetic variants explain only approximately 30% of the heritable risk of developing AD. One hurdle to AD research is that it can only be definitively diagnosed at autopsy, making cruder, clinic-based diagnoses more common. In recent years, several brain pathologies that mimic AD’s clinical presentation have been identified including brain arteriolosclerosis, hippocampal sclerosis (HS), and, most recently, limbic-predominant age-related TDP-43 encephalopathy (LATE). It has become …