Tag: poster session

Statistics are becoming a competitive necessity for companies large and small. No longer the domain of a few back-office analysts, companies today require statistical knowledge as part of a well-rounded analytical background. That’s where QBA121 – Managerial Statistics II – comes in. In the course, we develop the foundational skills for statistical analysis, primarily regression modeling.

In a world surrounded by Big Data opportunities, students need to be comfortable with statistics and have the tools to analyze data to develop managerial recommendations.

The QBA121 project does just that. It allows students to explore and analyze data that interests them. The poster session gives them an opportunity to display their insights to a broad audience. Their projects reflect both their interests and the competencies they mastered during the course. Most of the students applied regression analysis to gain insight on a topic they were knowledgeable about. Statistics allowed them to expand their knowledge while grounding insights in data, rather than conjecture. In many projects initial hypotheses were only partially supported, and the data determined that multiple factors impact the dependent variable.

During the course we learned why statistics is a foundation in so many disciplines in academia. It can be applied to diverse topics that students will explore in their academic journey. Similarly, the topics chosen for the course project reflect the diversity of students’ interests.

Movies were of interest this past semester, with students identifying which movie awards are best predictors of Academy Award nominations; how a book’s genre and the author’s productivity  impact a movie’s success;  and which factors are effective predictors of Best-Actor Oscar Nominations.

Crime statistics make for effective, if not particularly uplifting, projects. Here we learned how education, poverty, population density, and law enforcement impact local crime. We also found out that the key factors determining a city’s crime index are assaults, rapes, and larceny.

Finally, sports frequently generate a lot of interest in the class. Every Monday-morning coach wants to know why his team isn’t living up to their expectations. For those that want an in-depth look at college basketball, we have some advice on which teams will succeed in “March Madness”.

To see a sample of the projects presented, please view the Spring 2016 poster session book, click here.

Please join us next semester as we showcase projects from another talented cohort.

Guest blogger: Eli Snir, Senior Lecturer in Management

Business at the intersection of art and science is epitomized in the Managerial Statistics II course. As we progress through the course, we realize that statistics is not only a set of mathematical concepts; it is also prone to questions of judgment and interpretation that are commonplace in the social sciences. No wonder that this is a ubiquitous tool among university faculty.

The capstone of the Managerial Statistics II course is developing a term paper. Students choose a topic to study and demonstrate how regression analysis applies. The choice of topic is unconstrained. One of the goals of the course is to demonstrate the broad applicability of statistics, and specifically of regression analysis, to any area of interest. And the term papers reflect that. They are as broad and as encompassing as the university, drawing on nearly every discipline taught here.

As the course is at the intersection of art and science, so are the term papers. Students have two deliverables in the project. One is a rigorous analysis of the topic, proving their knowledge of the tools studied in the course. The second is a poster and presentation of their analysis to a broad audience. The Managerial Statistics II Poster Session eBook is a product of the latter. It is a collection of posters from the poster session in the Fall 2013 QBA121 course.

The audience for the poster session is diverse, including undergraduate students, MBA students, advisors, faculty, and deans. Students are expected to explain their analysis to various constituents, some desire a qualitatively understanding while other challenge students on statistical methodology. Invariably, students in the course address all questions comprehensively and confidently.

On the pages of the e-book we collected a sample of the posters from the course. Hopefully, they convey the breadth of student interest and the depth of student learning. As you will see, statistics does apply to every discipline and every one of us.

Blog post by Eli Snir, Lecturer in Management

Professor Eli Snir closed out his Managerial Statistics II course with poster presentation sessions for all three sections to an audience of faculty, staff, and their peers. Student teams—predominately comprised of sophomores—used their newly learned skills to address real world business problems. It was great to see the students in action, sharing their results via the use of statistical modeling (primarily regression models) to quantify and forecast economic and business phenomena. The spectrum of projects pursued was quite diverse. Examples included the statistically significant criteria for first round draft picks for the NFL, contributing factors to Olympic success, and which country has the best schools.

Poster session for last day of class