This week it’s all about the numbers. Seth Rubin (Finance and Economics) talks baseball stats while Joe Servadio (Statistics, Math-Economics) discusses undergraduate sanitation habits.

Seth Rubin Market Efficiency of Major League Baseball Player Salaries: A Look at the Moneyball Hypothesis Ten Years Later”

reitter

What most excites me is the opportunity to combined a passion of mine in baseball statistics, and combine it with what I have learned and will continue to learn and get to write about it as a thesis. The most challenging part is finding the right statistics to use for my research and getting some of the pieces of data.

I am expecting to learn about Major League Baseball and how statistical analysis has and is still changing the way players are evaluated. My hopeful plans will be to work at either a financial services firm or with a major league sports team where I can use my data analysis tools to make a positive impact. And then eventually go back to school for either my MBA, Masters or even potentially a PHD. This will help me continue to grow my analysis skills that will help me wherever I end up.

Joe Servadio: “Comparative Risk of Undergraduate Sanitation Habits.”

lavery

The intent is to determine whether or not any interactions exist among the Knowledge, Beliefs, and Practices of undergraduates concerning sanitation habits. The habits I am isolating are hand hygiene and food safety, which focuses on produce storage and preparation.

So far, what I have found to be the most exciting part of my research is being able to conduct my own research project that has a practical application. I also was really excited to be able to create and conduct a survey that was sent to a random sample of undergraduates. My response rate was better than expected, and I’m really glad that I was able to collect a lot of data, which will make my results more precise.

The biggest challenge I am facing so far is the step that I am currently working on: the data analysis. My survey closed last week, and I am now in the process of sorting through all of the raw data and making it more usable. Many of the questions on my survey were multi-part, meaning that while something looked like 1 question with 10 different categories, it now to me is like 10 different questions that must be addressed individually. It’s definitely a challenge to take a huge Excel spreadsheet and find a way to make this data usable. What I hope to learn from this thesis is how to organize, plan, and conduct a research project. I hope that this will, even at the most rudimentary level, provide insight into a career in research. So far, I have found this to be a very positive experience.

I currently am applying to doctoral programs in Statistics with a research focus in health sciences. I think that writing a thesis in this topic is a good way to show graduate schools that I am currently involved in this form of research, and that I am capable of being involved in research.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email