Applied Statistics Commons^™

An Optimized Route For Q100'S Bert And Kristin To Visit All Jersey Mike's Subs In Atlanta For Charity

Symposium of Student Scholars

The Bert Show is a popular morning show on Atlanta’s Q100 radio station. They host a non-profit organization that provides a “magical, all-expenses-paid, five-day journey to Walt Disney World for children with chronic and terminal illnesses and their families” called “Bert’s Big Adventure.” On March 28^th, 2018, thirty-seven locations of Jersey Mike’s are participating in the their Jersey Mike’s Day of Giving to support Bert’s Big Adventure. The goal is to have two popular radio show hosts visit each of these locations for some photos and presence to draw in more customers! But how do we get two …

The Psychology Of Baseball: How The Mental Game Impacts The Physical Game, Kiera Dalmass

Honors Scholar Theses

The purpose of this study was to find whether or not sports psychology can be effective. Baseball was chosen as the sport for the study because baseball can be analyzed for nearly every single factor of the game, with the exception of the mental readiness or state of the player when he steps onto the field. It therefore provides the optimal atmosphere to provide clinical and statistical support to the field of sports psychology. Despite the various, numerous pieces of literature that praise and show support for sports psychology, there hasn’t been clinical research to support it. Additionally, multiple sports …

Cognitive Virtual Admissions Counselor, Kumar Raja Guvindan Raju, Cory Adams, Raghuram Srinivas

SMU Data Science Review

Abstract. In this paper, we present a cognitive virtual admissions counselor for the Master of Science in Data Science program at Southern Methodist University. The virtual admissions counselor is a system capable of providing potential students accurate information at the time that they want to know it. After the evaluation of multiple technologies, Amazon’s LEX was selected to serve as the core technology for the virtual counselor chatbot. Student surveys were leveraged to collect and generate training data to deploy the natural language capability. The cognitive virtual admissions counselor platform is currently capable of providing an end-to-end conversational dialog to …

Using Random Forests To Describe Equity In Higher Education: A Critical Quantitative Analysis Of Utah’S Postsecondary Pipelines, Tyler Mcdaniel

Butler Journal of Undergraduate Research

The following work examines the Random Forest (RF) algorithm as a tool for predicting student outcomes and interrogating the equity of postsecondary education pipelines. The RF model, created using longitudinal data of 41,303 students from Utah's 2008 high school graduation cohort, is compared to logistic and linear models, which are commonly used to predict college access and success. Substantially, this work finds High School GPA to be the best predictor of postsecondary GPA, whereas commonly used ACT and AP test scores are not nearly as important. Each model identified several demographic disparities in higher education access, most significantly the effects …

Evaluating The Efficacy Of Conditional Analysis Of Variance Under Heterogeneity And Non-Normality, Yan Wang, Thanh Pham, Diep Nguyen, Eun Sook Kim, Yi-Hsin Chen, Jeffrey Kromrey, Zhiyao Yi, Yue Yin

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

A simulation study was conducted to examine the efficacy of conditional analysis of variance (ANOVA) methods where the initial homogeneity of variance screening leads to the choice between the ANOVA F test and robust ANOVA methods. Type I error control and statistical power were investigated under various conditions.

Visualizing Statistical Data On United States Agriculture, Xingyao Xiao

Undergraduate Research Symposium 2018

Food is essential to life. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) plays an indispensable role in ensuring people have access to healthy food. However, the data on the USDA website is not easy to access. Users must download many files to get data about animals, crops, the weather, and so on. To make the data more accessible to the general public, I built a web-based application to help make the data easy to access, explore, and compare. My application integrates multiple datasets from USDA website to provide graphic visualizations that enable users to get the exact, specific data intervals …

The Validity Of Online Patient Ratings Of Physicians, Jennifer L. Priestley, Yiyun Zhou, Robert Mcgrath

Faculty Articles

Background: Information from ratings sites are increasingly informing patient decisions related to health care and the selection of physicians.

Objective: The current study sought to determine the validity of online patient ratings of physicians through comparison with physician peer review.

Methods: We extracted 223,715 reviews of 41,104 physicians from 10 of the largest cities in the United States, including 1142 physicians listed as “America’s Top Doctors” through physician peer review. Differences in mean online patient ratings were tested for physicians who were listed and those who were not.

Results: Overall, no differences were found between the online patient ratings based …

A Comparison Of Unsupervised Methods For Dna Microarray Leukemia Data, Denise Harness

Appalachian Student Research Forum

Advancements in DNA microarray data sequencing have created the need for sophisticated machine learning algorithms and feature selection methods. Probabilistic graphical models, in particular, have been used to identify whether microarrays or genes cluster together in groups of individuals having a similar diagnosis. These clusters of genes are informative, but can be misleading when every gene is used in the calculation. First feature reduction techniques are explored, however the size and nature of the data prevents traditional techniques from working efficiently. Our method is to use the partial correlations between the features to create a precision matrix and predict which …

Score Test And Likelihood Ratio Test For Zero-Inflated Binomial Distribution And Geometric Distribution, Xiaogang Dai

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The main purpose of this thesis is to compare the performance of the score test and the likelihood ratio test by computing type I errors and type II errors when the tests are applied to the geometric distribution and inflated binomial distribution. We first derive test statistics of the score test and the likelihood ratio test for both distributions. We then use the software package R to perform a simulation to study the behavior of the two tests. We derive the R codes to calculate the two types of error for each distribution. We create lots of samples to approximate …

Developing Statistical Methods For Data From Platforms Measuring Gene Expression, Gaoxiang Jia

Statistical Science Theses and Dissertations

This research contains two topics: (1) PBNPA: a permutation-based non-parametric analysis of CRISPR screen data; (2) RCRnorm: an integrated system of random-coefficient hierarchical regression models for normalizing NanoString nCounter data from FFPE samples.

Clustered regularly-interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) screens are usually implemented in cultured cells to identify genes with critical functions. Although several methods have been developed or adapted to analyze CRISPR screening data, no single spe- cific algorithm has gained popularity. Thus, rigorous procedures are needed to overcome the shortcomings of existing algorithms. We developed a Permutation-Based Non-Parametric Analysis (PBNPA) algorithm, which computes p-values at the gene level …

College Students’ Personality Traits In Relation To Career Readiness, Shelby R. Overacker, Carly E. Kalis, Francesca Coppola

Student Publications

This study examined sixty-one Gettysburg College juniors and seniors (31 males, 30 females) to measure how the Big Five personality traits, and whether a student has Type D characteristics, determines if a student is career ready. We collected data through an in-person survey, with questions about personality traits, ambition, career readiness, and demographics. Regression was used to statistically analyze our first hypothesis. The results found that there is a significant positive association between conscientiousness and career readiness, but there is no significant association between extraversion and career readiness. For the second hypothesis, a mediation model was used. We found that …

Perceptions Of Transactional And Transformational Leaders According To Gender, Quinn I. Igram, Andrew N. Garstka, Lindsay D. Harris

Student Publications

The lack of females occupying leadership positions in the modern workplace has prompted the research of this study. In order to better understand the perceptions that exist regarding successful leadership, this study was conducted with the intention of understanding individual leadership style through the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire, which measures transactional and transformational leadership styles (Bass and Avolio, 1993). 64 male and female participants, made up of 36 students and 28 individuals in the workforce ages 18-61 with an average age of 31 answered 21 questions to assess their leadership style and 1 to measure who they perceived as a successful …

Pricing Asian Options: Volatility Forecasting As A Source Of Downside Risk, Adam T. Diehl

Undergraduate Economic Review

Asian options are a class of derivative securities whose payoffs average movements in the underlying asset as a means of hedging exposure to unexpected market behavior. We find that despite their volatility smoothing properties, the price of an Asian option is sensitive to the choice of volatility model employed to price them from market data. We estimate the errors induced by two common schemes of forecasting volatility and their potential impact upon trading.

Default Priors For The Intercept Parameter In Logistic Regressions, Philip S. Boonstra, Ryan P. Barbaro, Ananda Sen

The University of Michigan Department of Biostatistics Working Paper Series

In logistic regression, separation refers to the situation in which a linear combination of predictors perfectly discriminates the binary outcome. Because finite-valued maximum likelihood parameter estimates do not exist under separation, Bayesian regressions with informative shrinkage of the regression coefficients offer a suitable alternative. Little focus has been given on whether and how to shrink the intercept parameter. Based upon classical studies of separation, we argue that efficiency in estimating regression coefficients may vary with the intercept prior. We adapt alternative prior distributions for the intercept that downweight implausibly extreme regions of the parameter space rendering less sensitivity to separation. …

Essentials Of Structural Equation Modeling, Mustafa Emre Civelek

Zea E-Books Collection

Structural Equation Modeling is a statistical method increasingly used in scientific studies in the fields of Social Sciences. It is currently a preferred analysis method, especially in doctoral dissertations and academic researches. However, since many universities do not include this method in the curriculum of undergraduate and graduate courses, students and scholars try to solve the problems they encounter by using various books and internet resources.

This book aims to guide the researcher who wants to use this method in a way that is free from math expressions. It teaches the steps of a research program using structured equality modeling …

Building A Better Risk Prevention Model, Steven Hornyak

National Youth Advocacy & Resilience Conference

This presentation chronicles the work of Houston County Schools in developing a risk prevention model built on more than ten years of longitudinal student data. In its second year of implementation, Houston At-Risk Profiles (HARP), has proven effective in identifying those students most in need of support and linking them to interventions and supports that lead to improved outcomes and significantly reduces the risk of failure.

Density Estimation Of Spatio-Temporal Point Patterns Using Moran’S Statistics, Jennifer L. Lorio, Norou Diawara, Lance A. Waller

Mathematics & Statistics Faculty Publications

Moran’s Index is a statistic that measures spatial autocorrelation, quantifying the degree of dispersion (or spread) of objects in space. When investigating data in an area, a single Moran statistic may not give a sufficient summary of the autocorrelation spread. However, by partitioning the area and taking the Moran statistic of each subarea, we discover patterns of the local neighbors not otherwise apparent. In this paper, we consider the model of the spread of an infectious disease, incorporate time factor, and simulate a multilevel Poisson process where the dependence among the levels is captured by the rate of increase of …

Effect Of Anthropometric Variability On Middle-Market Aircraft Seating, Tara C. Sriram

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

A middle-of-market aircraft, or MoMA, is defined as an aircraft capable of flying 180-250 passengers without refueling for 2,300-5,800 miles(~2,000-5,000 nautical miles). As the name suggests, middle-of-market aircraft are positioned in between the market segments served by narrow body (single-aisle) and wide body (twin-aisle) aircraft. This paper presents the findings of a study on the effect of anthropomorphic variability on economy class seating on middle-market aircraft currently in service. The study found that among 130 middle-market LOPAs, the mean seat pitch was greater for US airlines than for Asian airlines. Furthermore, the sampled Asian airlines had a higher preference …

Monte Carlo Simulations Of Three-Dimensional Electromagnetic Gaussian Schell-Model Sources, Milo W. Hyde Iv, Santasri Bose-Pillai, Olga Korotkova

Faculty Publications

This article presents a method to simulate a three-dimensional (3D) electromagnetic Gaussian-Schell model (EGSM) source with desired characteristics. Using the complex screen method, originally developed for the synthesis of two-dimensional stochastic electromagnetic fields, a set of equations is derived which relate the desired 3D source characteristics to those of the statistics of the random complex screen. From these equations and the 3D EGSM source realizability conditions, a single criterion is derived, which when satisfied guarantees both the realizability and simulatability of the desired 3D EGSM source. Lastly, a 3D EGSM source, with specified properties, is simulated; the Monte Carlo simulation …

Predicting The Next Us President By Simulating The Electoral College, Boyan Kostadinov

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

We develop a simulation model for predicting the outcome of the US Presidential election based on simulating the distribution of the Electoral College. The simulation model has two parts: (a) estimating the probabilities for a given candidate to win each state and DC, based on state polls, and (b) estimating the probability that a given candidate will win at least 270 electoral votes, and thus win the White House. All simulations are coded using the high-level, open-source programming language R. One of the goals of this paper is to promote computational thinking in any STEM field by illustrating how probabilistic …