Other Statistics and Probability Commons^™

The Dirty “S” Word: Innovative Teaching Techniques For Counselor Educators Facilitating Learning In Statistics And Research, Rebecca L. Tadlock-Marlo, Megan Michalak

Faculty Research & Creative Activity

Innovative pedagogy will be presented and discussed to help make research a less painful class to both teach and learn. Foci include teaching methods, potential assignments, and suggestions for activities to help facilitate a more fluid learning process for counselors. Attendees will explore aspects of helping students overcome their fear of both statistics and research.

The Construction Of Edmond Halley's 1701 Map Of Magnetic Declination, Lori L. Murray

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Using the navigational instruments of his time, Edmond Halley collected data during sea voyages of the HMS Paramore. Following these voyages, in 1701 he published a map showing lines of equal magnetic declination. Magnetic declination or variation is the angular difference between magnetic north and geographical or true north for any point on the earth’s surface. The map has been held up by many as an early, and good, example of statistical graphics. Halley did not reveal the data analytic techniques that he used in his map construction and they remain unknown to this day. Using some mathematical tools of …

Murine Gut Microbiota Is Defined By Host Genetics And Modulates Variation Of Metabolic Traits, Autumn M. Mcknite, Maria Elisa Perez-Munoz, Lu Lu, Evan G. Williams, Simon Brewer, Penelope A. Andreux, John W. M. Bastiaansen, Xusheng Wang, Stephen D. Kachman, Johan Auwerx, Robert W. Williams, Andrew K. Benson, Daniel A. Peterson, Daniel C. Ciobanu

Department of Statistics: Faculty Publications

The gastrointestinal tract harbors a complex and diverse microbiota that has an important role in host metabolism. Microbial diversity is influenced by a combination of environmental and host genetic factors and is associated with several polygenic diseases. In this study we combined next-generation sequencing, genetic mapping, and a set of physiological traits of the BXD mouse population to explore genetic factors that explain differences in gut microbiota and its impact on metabolic traits. Molecular profiling of the gut microbiota revealed important quantitative differences in microbial composition among BXD strains. These differences in gut microbial composition are influenced by host-genetics, which …

Using The R Library Rpanel For Gui-Based Simulations In Introductory Statistics Courses, Ryan M. Allison

Statistics

As a student, I noticed that the statistical package R (http://www.r-project.org) would have several benefits of its usage in the classroom. One benefit to the package is its free and open-source nature. This would be a great benefit for instructors and students alike since it would be of no cost to use, unlike other statistical packages. Due to this, students could continue using the program after their statistical courses and into their professional careers. It would be good to expose students while they are in school to a tool that professionals use in industry. R also has powerful …

A Study Of Women Working In The Actuarial Field, Jillian Emberg

Honors Projects in Mathematics

The goal of this project is to examine how women fit into the actuarial career path and how cultural expectations, biological factors, and personal aspirations affect their experiences in the field. Dramatic changes in the profession have occurred since its emergence in the nineteenth century to become more welcoming to women who choose to enter the profession. However, despite the equalizing demographic shifts of the field, it is still a male-dominated profession. This paper attempts to analyze why some of the changes in the demographics of the field have occurred as well as explain what factors contribute to women’s underrepresentation …

Random Number Generation: Types And Techniques, David F. Dicarlo

Senior Honors Theses

What does it mean to have random numbers? Without understanding where a group of numbers came from, it is impossible to know if they were randomly generated. However, common sense claims that if the process to generate these numbers is truly understood, then the numbers could not be random. Methods that are able to let their internal workings be known without sacrificing random results are what this paper sets out to describe. Beginning with a study of what it really means for something to be random, this paper dives into the topic of random number generators and summarizes the key …

Sample Size Under Inverse Negative Binomial Group Testing For Accuracy In Parameter Estimation, Osval Antonio Montesinos-López, Abelardo Montesinos-López, Jose Crossa, Kent M. Eskridge

Department of Statistics: Faculty Publications

Background:The group testing method has been proposed for the detection and estimation of genetically modified plants (adventitious presence of unwanted transgenic plants, AP). For binary response variables (presence or absence), group testing is efficient when the prevalence is low, so that estimation, detection, and sample size methods have been developed under the binomial model. However, when the event is rare (low prevalence

Methodology/Principal Findings: This research proposes three sample size procedures (two computational and one analytic) for estimating prevalence using group testing under inverse (negative) binomial sampling. These methods provide the required number of positive pools (r_m) …

Application Of Inter-Die Rank Statistics In Defect Detection, Vivek Bakshi

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis presents a statistical method to identify the test escapes. Test often acquires parametric measurements as a function of logical state of a chip. The usual method of classifying chips as pass or fail is to compare each state measurement to a test limit. Subtle manufacturing defects are escaping the test limits due to process variations in deep sub-micron technologies which results in mixing of healthy and faulty parametric test measurements. This thesis identifies the chips with subtle defects by using rank order of the parametric measurements. A hypothesis is developed that a defect is likely to disturb the …

The Dirty “S” Word: Innovative Teaching Techniques For Counselor Educators Facilitating Learning In Statistics And Research, Rebecca L. Tadlock-Marlo, Megan Michalak

Rebecca L Tadlock-Marlo

Innovative pedagogy will be presented and discussed to help make research a less painful class to both teach and learn. Foci include teaching methods, potential assignments, and suggestions for activities to help facilitate a more fluid learning process for counselors. Attendees will explore aspects of helping students overcome their fear of both statistics and research.

Muscle Organization In Individuals With And Without Pain And Joint Dysfunction, J. C. Nickel, Y. M. Gonzalez, W. D. Mccall, R. Ohrbach, D. B. Marx, H. Liu, L. R. Iwasaki

Department of Statistics: Faculty Publications

Central nervous system organization of masticatory muscles determines the magnitude of joint and muscle forces. Validated computer-assisted models of neuromuscular organization during biting were used to determine organization in individuals with and without temporomandibular disorders (TMD). Ninety-one individuals (47 women, 44 men) were assigned to one of four diagnostic groups based on the presence (+) or absence (-) of pain (P) and bilateral temporomandibular joint disc displacement (DD). Electromyography and bite-forces were measured during right and left incisor and molar biting. Two three-dimensional models employing neuromuscular objectives of minimization of joint loads (MJL) or muscle effort (MME) simulated biting tasks. …

Drosophila Melanogaster Selection For Survival Of Bacillus Cereus Infection: Life History Trait Indirect Responses, Junjie Ma, Andrew K. Benson, Stephen D. Kachman, Zhen Hu, Lawrence G. Harshman

Department of Statistics: Faculty Publications

To study evolved resistance/tolerance in an insect model, we carried out an experimental evolution study using D. melanogaster and the opportunistic pathogen B. cereus as the agent of selection. The selected lines evolved a 3.0- to 3.3-log increase in the concentration of spores required for 50% mortality after 18–24 generations of selection. In the absence of any treatment, selected lines evolved an increase in egg production and delayed development time. The latter response could be interpreted as a cost of evolution. Alternatively, delayed development might have been a target of selection resulting in increased adult fat body function including production …

Prediction In Several Conventional Contexts, Bertrand Clarke, Jennifer Clarke

Department of Statistics: Faculty Publications

We review predictive techniques from several traditional branches of statistics. Starting with prediction based on the normal model and on the empirical distribution function, we proceed to techniques for various forms of regression and classification. Then, we turn to time series, longitudinal data, and survival analysis. Our focus throughout is on the mechanics of prediction more than on the properties of predictors.

Comment On Article By Sancetta, Bertrand Clarke

Department of Statistics: Faculty Publications

This paper makes a landmark contribution in three senses.

First, it provides many results that are fundamentally important in their own right. I refer specifically to Theorems 3 and 8. Theorem 3 treats arbitrary loss functions by breaking the integral into two terms, one It, where a difference of losses is bounded and another, IIt, where a bound on the moments of a difference of losses must be used. (All notation here is the same as the author's unless noted otherwise.) The treatment of these two terms reveals the role of the relative entropy and how the tails of the …

The Dirty “S” Word: Innovative Teaching Techniques For Counselor Educators Facilitating Learning In Statistics And Research, Rebecca Tadlock-Marlo, Megan Michalak

Faculty Research & Creative Activity

Innovative pedagogy will be presented and discussed to help make research a less painful class to both teach and learn. Foci include teaching methods, potential assignments, and suggestions for activities to help facilitate a more fluid learning process for counselors. Attendees will explore aspects of helping students overcome their fear of both statistics and research.

Modeling Dependence Using Skew T Copulas: Bayesian Inference And Applications, Michael S. Smith, Quan Gan, Robert Kohn

Michael Stanley Smith

[THIS IS AN AUGUST 2010 REVISION THAT REPLACES ALL PREVIOUS VERSIONS.]

We construct a copula from the skew t distribution of Sahu, Dey & Branco (2003). This copula can capture asymmetric and extreme dependence between variables, and is one of the few copulas that can do so and still be used in high dimensions effectively. However, it is difficult to estimate the copula model by maximum likelihood when the multivariate dimension is high, or when some or all of the marginal distributions are discrete-valued, or when the parameters in the marginal distributions and copula are estimated jointly. We therefore propose …

Estimation Of Copula Models With Discrete Margins Via Bayesian Data Augmentation, Michael S. Smith, Mohamad A. Khaled

Michael Stanley Smith

Estimation of copula models with discrete margins is known to be difficult beyond the bivariate case. We show how this can be achieved by augmenting the likelihood with latent variables, and computing inference using the resulting augmented posterior. To evaluate this we propose two efficient Markov chain Monte Carlo sampling schemes. One generates the latent variables as a block using a Metropolis-Hasting step with a proposal that is close to its target distribution, the other generates them one at a time. Our method applies to all parametric copulas where the conditional copula functions can be evaluated, not just elliptical copulas …