STAT 157 (2016) : Schedule of student reading/talk projects

I've done minor edits to some titles, for clarity. You can change topics if you wish, but keep the same time slot.

Look at the reading projects paragraph on this page. In particular you have a 6 minute slot, allowing time to change speakers. If you have a handout, email to me the day before your talk, and I will make copies.

Wednesday 10 February

4.10 - 4.16. Xiaochen Yang: "A Random Walk Down Wall Street".
4.17 - 4.23. Christopher Liu: Statlantic City: probability and statistics behind Monopoly.
4.24 - 4.30. Dong Kyun Kim: Counting cards in blackjack.
4.31 - 4.37. Zhenyang Zhang: Massey's rating method.
4.38 - 4.44. Kent Chen: Basketball: when to foul when trailing or leading.
4.45 - 4.51. Justin (Hyuntae) Kim: Prediction in swimming.
4.52 - 4.58. Leanne Lee: Slot machines and random number generators.
4.59 - 5.05. Xinyang Geng: Statistical analysis of natural language data.
5.06 - 5.12. Tongzhou Wang: Regression, correlation, and prediction.
5.13 - 5.19. Shichang Zhang: The exchange paradox.
5.20 - 5.26. Rahul Shankar: The Allais paradox.

Wednesday 17 February

4.10 - 4.16. Daniel Saedi: Delivering Alpha: Are institutional investor returns a function of chance, skill or both?
4.17 - 4.23. Ellen Chan: Testing square root law for MSCI index for large-cap, domestic equities and analyzing the 2008 financial crisis versus now.
4.24 - 4.30. Connie Xinyi Zhang: Should you avoid flying airlines that have had past crashes?
4.31 - 4.37. Andrew Soncrant: Sports betting: How it works.
4.38 - 4.44. Nicholas Hancock: Arbitrage Opportunities in Online Sports Betting.
4.45 - 4.51. Canzhi Ye: Applying Elo to the NBA.
4.52 - 4.58. Ilsung Lee: Hot hands are real?
4.59 - 5.05. Hanying Mo: Optimal times to buy flight tickets.
5.06 - 5.12. Qianhui Wan: Why can't we forecast earthquakes?
5.13 - 5.19. Chuyue Frances Huang: Using Non-Representative Sample for Election Prediction.
5.20 - 5.26. Renjun (Vicky) Zhu: Risky world: social and cultural perspectives on risk.
5.27 - 5.33. Weidong Qin: FMRI data in statistics.

Monday 22 February

4.10 - 4.16. Shane Barratt: Probability is necessary for Genomics.
4.17 - 4.23. Grace Bian: Bayes Rule in Real Life.
4.24 - 4.30. Hanquan Yang: The mystery behind slot machine - RNG.
4.31 - 4.37. Grace Deng: Pascal's wager.
4.38 - 4.44. Jin Cho: The Monty Hall problem.
4.45 - 4.51. Pui Fung Lam: Miracles -- statistically impossible events or rare phenomena.
4.52 - 4.58. Kingsley Xuan: Personnel and equipment configuration in the circulation desk of a library.
4.59 - 5.05. Chenyan Zhu: What is Your Life Expectancy?
5.06 - 5.12. Albert Lee: Simple Idea to Finance Biomedical Research that can save millions of lives.
5.13 - 5.19. Shashank Bhargava: Fourth Down Decisions: Analyzing Value of Kicking and Punting in Football.
5.27 - 5.33. Nadav Tadelis: Correcting for Clustered Standard Errors: Why and How.
5.34 - 5.40. Ling Yang: Fun Texas Poker Facts.

[Later]

Sukhyun Park: Prisoner's dilemma.
Anshuman Dewangan: Probability in card shuffling.

STAT 157 (2014) : Schedule of student reading/talk projects

Wednesday 24 September

4.10 - 4.16. Nicole Wallstedt: Life or Death: Public Speaking.
4.17 - 4.23. Justine Huang: The West African Ebola epidemic and estimating the reproductive number.
4.24 - 4.30. Sida Ye: Probability and Lotteries I.
4.31 - 4.37. Ryan Tan: Probability of default I.
4.38 - 4.44. Jiayu Qin: Brownian Motion in the Stock Market.
4.45 - 4.51. Inno Asuncion: When Field Goal Percentage doesn't tell the full story: Quantifying Spatial relative field goal efficiency in basketball.
4.52 - 4.58. Imran Yousuf: Real Probability in Soccer Betting.
4.59 - 5.05. Rajaram Patel: 4th Downs in Football.
5.06 - 5.12. Ji Hun Lee: The Secret of Murphy's Law.

Monday 29 September

4.10 - 4.16. Yiwen Wei: Simpson's Paradox.
4.17 - 4.23. William Chon: Probability and Lotteries II.
4.24 - 4.30. Mengyao Xu: Air crashes and travelers' decision on airlines.
4.31 - 4.37. Patty Yuqiu Shen: Probability of Default in Assessing Economic Capital II.
4.38 - 4.44. Jenny Alch: Randomness As Seen in Binary Strings.
4.45 - 4.51. Yichen Guo: Market Risk of Biotech Companies.
4.52 - 4.58. Biying Li: Fortune's Formula: How to Profit in Warrants Trading with Kelly's Model.
4.59 - 5.05. Yufan Hu: A Mind Reading "Magic" Trick.
5.06 - 5.12. Brandon Flannery: Probability in Poker, and Optimization Strategies.
5.13 - 5.19. Josef Conrado Nunez: An Introduction to Fantasy Football.

Wednesday 1 October

4.10 - 4.16. Joseph Simonian: Which Economic Forecasts are Accurate?
4.17 - 4.23. Hae Hyun (Raina) Cho: The Sally Clark Case: Two Murders or Two SIDS?
4.24 - 4.30. Xu Deng: The "belief in good luck" scale.
4.31 - 4.37. Anlin Winarto: Counting Your Way Out of The Casino.
4.38 - 4.44. Yoshiki Mizuno: Fireworks Displays from the Perspective of Public goods.
4.45 - 4.51. Tianyang He: Using Statistic to deal with Adverse Selection Problems in the Insurance Business.
4.52 - 4.58. Hye Soo Cho: Predicting Flu Trends using Twitter Data.
4.59 - 5.05. Anirudh Kilambi: Predicting Baseball's Champion: Quantitative methods to predict the World Series winner.
5.06 - 5.12. Mingyo Kim: How not to lose the money at baccarat and roulette.
5.13 - 5.19. Tejomay Gadgil: Systematic Biases in Perceptions of Randomness.

STAT 157 (2011) : Schedule of student reading/talk projects

Thursday 15 September

3.40 - 3.45. Soo-bin Ryu: "S&P 500 -- How is it related to probability?"
3.46 - 3.51. Seohee Kim: "Monte Carlo Methods used in Finance".
3.52 - 3.57. Conner Thomas: "Overreliance of Statistical Analysis in Finance".
3.58 - 4.03. Ka Wa Hung: "On Random Numbers".
4.04 - 4.09. Wenjun (Iris) Dong: "The Friendship paradox".
4.10 - 4.15. Cecilia Dao: "Why Am I Always Wrong?": A Conditional Probability Dilemma.
4.16 - 4.21. Sandy Liu: "Benford's Law."
4.28 - 4.33. Steven Bong: "Inventing the AIDS Virus" (by Peter Duesberg).
4.34 - 4.39. Cheuk Nam (Benson) Au Yeung: "Coincident Situations",
4.40 - 4.45. Yi Wen Chen: "Predictably irrational: relativity in life".
4.46 - 4.51. Albert Wan: "Six degrees of separation and social networks".

Tuesday 20 September

3.40 - 3.45. Erika Oblea: "The probability that your vote matters in a presidential election".
3.46 - 3.51. YiFu Chen: "Rawlsian Justice: Risk versus Uncertainty."
3.52 - 3.57. Christina Qinxin Yang: "Simpson's Paradox--some real life examples inside Berkeley, and in the world outside".
3.58 - 4.03. Yooseon Hwang: "Regression analysis of meat consumption and height by areas and countries".
4.04 - 4.09. Angela Wong: "Probability and Traffic".
4.10 - 4.15. Zheng Ni: "The chance that an asteroid will hit the earth within the next century".
4.16 - 4.21. Sang Chung: "Scrabble: When You Can Blame Your Tiles?"
4.22 - 4.27. Hong Chan: "Don't let the news headline statistics scare you!"
4.28 - 4.33. Angela Liu: "Risks and money".
4.34 - 4.39. Cheng-Fu Tsai: "Gambling for Fun vs. Serious Gambling"
4.40 - 4.45. Alice Liang: "The Chance in Weather".
4.46 - 4.51. Wanyue (Iris) Zhang: "Small worlds." (network science/six degrees of separation).

Thursday 22 September

3.40 - 3.45. Antonio Machado: "Predicting Plays in American Football".
3.46 - 3.51. Amrit Dhar: "A State/Value Approach to measuring Effectiveness of Football Plays".
3.52 - 3.57. Josh Schaffer: "Probability and Randomness in Baseball".
3.58 - 4.03. Jean Fabius Mugisha: "Soccermetrics: A statistical analysis of soccer games".
4.04 - 4.09. Max Moacanin: "Probability and Basketball Game Outcomes".
4.10 - 4.15. Tim Xin: "Bayesian logic model for predicting outcomes of NBA games".
4.16 - 4.21. Puneet Lath: "Reliability of plus/minus as indicator of player ability in NBA".
4.22 - 4.27. James Saunders: "Methods to Evaluate NBA Player Efficiency".
4.28 - 4.33. Mengyun (Amy) Zhang. "Probability involved in poker".
4.34 - 4.39. Chelsea Nguyen: "Rock, Paper, Scissors".
4.40 - 4.45. In Hye Lee: "Factors affecting Korean consumer products choices".
4.46 - 4.51. Yan Dai: "Chinese Pinyin Input Method".
4.52 - 4.57. Zhaofeng Li: "The Luck Factor" (from Wiseman book).

STAT 157 (2008) : Schedule of student reading/talk projects

Note: I am asking students to "grade" the talks given in the class before the class when they give their own talk (except, of course, the last day's talks need to be graded by the first day's speakers). Pick up a "grade sheet" when you enter the room.

Monday September 29

Timothy Wong: The hot hand in basketball.
Rami Totari : Card counting.
Hing Lun So : "Gambler's fallacy" versus "hot hand".
Steven Lea: Any Given Sunday.
Jeff Gonda : Probability of winning a football game.
Aaron Solomon : Sabermetrics and Moneyball.
David Klein : Modeling Run Scoring in Baseball.
Irvin Liu : Do Clutch Performances in Sports Exist?
Ryan Chang : Roulette.
Christ Lin : Poker -- long-run Expected Value, Pot Odds, etc.

Wednesday October 1

Anshul Shah: Black Swans.
Aneesh Kadakia: Black Swans.
Nicki Wells: How connected are we?
Jack Andrzejewski : "Did you mean: How accurate is Wikipedia?"
Samuel Li : Fighting or Bargaining?
Dandan Zhang: Little Things and Big Differences.
Deviyani Gurung: the paper ``Visual Analysis of Large Heterogenous Social Networks by Semantic and Structural Abstraction".
Janet Luo: Hidden Markov modeling in speech recognition.
Nathan Lorenzen: Super Crunchers: statistics and neural network programming.
Sean Tsai : NBA power ranking.

Friday October 3

Wing Yip Fung: How long are you going to live?
Laura Williams: Probabilities of Cancer and their Expected Survival Rates.
Shan Shan Hou: How risk affects your everyday life.
Alec Kennedy : Following an Epidemic.
Joyce Wong : The Correlation between Birth and Death.
Jerry Wang : Why statistics has a growing importance in drinking games.
Ankur Bhatia : Probability Matching: Leaving With Your Coat and Unintuitive Guessing.
Bernard Niu : Queuing theory and how it relates to buses running on schedule.
Danny Chia: Odds in Mahjong.

Monday October 6

Lilei Yuan: Fortune's Formula.
Madeleine McCarthy : Modern Portfolio Theory.
Allen Ly : Gravity model for trade/finance.
JingZhuo-Kyle Jiang : Irrational stock prices compare to the company's earnings.
Li Ma : How to choose the Smallest Number Using Game Theory Mixed Strategy.
Yingching Yip : Lottery - is there an expected number? or is it biased?
Le Yin : Prolonged Life-Sleeping Beauty's Probability Parodoxes.
Andrew Duong: Psychology of the Monty Hall Problem.
Shirley Liu: The Two-Envelope Paradox.
Tianqi Zhu : Parrondo's Paradox.