On April 23rd, students enrolled in QBA 121 – the second component of Olin’s compulsory managerial statistics coursework – had the chance to present the findings of their cumulative term papers to their peers, staff, and visitors in Knight and Bauer Halls. Throughout the course, we learned a variety of statistical tools and measures, as well as how to apply these to the real world. The course even incorporated procedures in statistical software such as Excel and SPSS.

Guest Blogger: Adrian Lee is an Olin Business School sophomore studying Economics and Strategy and Operations and Supply Chain Management.

Adrian stands with his poster highlighting the findings from the analysis he and his partner, Andres, conducted for QBA 121.

For our term papers, we were assigned the task of developing a question about a situation in real life, and exploring that question by using our statistical tools to analyze data we found through secondary research. My partner, Andres, and I decided to look at baseball statistics – in particular, which statistics were most highly correlated with a team’s winning percentage. Through our analysis, we found that some metrics, such as slugging percentage, were much better predictors of winning percentage than others were. Since we were given free reign in our analysis, we were even able to examine peculiar variables that we were curious about. For example, we hypothesized that teams located closer to the equator would have higher winning percentages due to their warmer year-round conditions, but ended up with results that indicated that the opposite was true.

This project let us experience the kind of work that real statisticians do, and allowed us to test our own hypotheses using the material we learned in class. By applying the statistical tools I learned in QBA 121 to this project, I now see the impact that statistics can have on solving a wide array of business problems, and I am confident enough in my skills that I could use them to solve real-life problems on my own.