Students Present at Statistics Conference

Nine undergraduates from the statistics and data science programs presented posters or papers at the UPSTAT 2019 Conference, held on Friday, April 26 and Saturday, April 27, at the University of Rochester.

Two students, Rob Weber and Taylor Palermo, earned an Honorable Mention in the Computation and Application category. Student presentations included:

• Rob Weber: Inferential and sensitivity studies of the baseball wins above replacement metric
• Jacob Tarnowski and Kaili Saffran: Optimizing NFL receiver route combinations
• Nicole Pellman: Childhood Trauma: It doesn’t end there
• Alaa Yasin: Impact of celebrities in advertising campaigns
• Aaron Wilkins: Historical study of the relationship between the federal funds rate and the inflation rate
• Taylor Palermo: Impact of select social and economic factors on health
• Ryan Ingerson: Valuing a running back
• Zach Ryan: A simulation of baseball pitchers and their effectiveness

Rob Weber organized the session on sports statistics, which also featured presentations from Tarnowski and Saffran.

In addition, Dr. Bruce Blaine presented a poster, “Variance heterogeneity in psychological research: A Monte-Carlo study of the consequences for meta-analysis.” Drs. Barney Ricca, Kris Green, and Mark McKinzie presented a paper, “Working with unknown distributions,” and Ricca chaired a session on data analytics and public policy. Additionally, Dr. Katie Donovan and Prof. Anne Geraci attended.