STAT 440 - Forecasting
Project Information

In lieu of a Final Exam (or, as I prefer to call it, and "Ultimate Knowledge Festival"), students in the class will submit a Course Project (aka the "Perfect Project"). The project topic is up to the student; the only constraint is that the data analysis should involve regression analysis or some other quantitative forecasting technique. I will gladly discuss project ideas with you.

You will make a short presentation on your findings, and submit two papers. Presentations will be during class time on Monday, April 27. You will make an "e;elevator pitch." That is, you will speak for one to two minutes, telling us the essentials of your project. Emphasize what's important and interesting, and omit everything else. We should come away from this dazzled by what you have done, and eagerly longing to find out more. This presentation should be well-rehearsed. Order of presentations will be randomized.

Writeup of your "Perfect Project" will come in two forms. (This is a writing-enhanced course. One expectation of such courses is written communication in a variety of styles to a variety of audiences.) Specifically, you will produce:

AN ACADEMIC PAPER. This paper will follow conventions associated with writing for a scholarly audience. You will submit what is normally the first portion of such a paper, namely the Abstract, Introduction, Literature Review, and Methodology. (You are not asked for Data Analysis, Results, and Conclusions.) Use standard conventions for citation of sources (APA, MLA, Turabian, Chicago, whatever is appropriate to your discipline). Remember that you are writing for an academic audience. There is no page quota or limit. However, if your paper runs only a page or two, that is probably an indication that your work is too superficial to merit consideration as a course project in a senior-level class.

A POPULAR PAPER. The world's finest research does little good if no one hears about it or can understand it. In this paper, you are asked to communicate your findings to a general (non-technical) audience. The model here is a newspaper or magazine article, or a blog post. Model your writing on good articles from the contemporary press. Your focus should be on your findings and their implications. Avoid technical vocabulary. Explain things in layperson terms. Good articles of this sort generally run 500 to 1000 words.

Due date for both papers is 5:00 p.m. on Saturday, May 2. Hard copies are preferred. They may be submitted to my office, 526A in LBC (elevator to fifth floor; there's an office suite directly ahead; I'm at the far end of that suite). If I'm not in, slide the papers under the door. Electronic versions are accepted in a pinch. Late papers are accepted at a penalty grade, but the absolute drop-dead deadline is 2:00 p.m. on Tuesday, May 5.

While not required, I encourage you to submit enough of your computational work that I can tell whether things were done correctly. An electronic version of a spreadsheet may be emailed to me.

I'm providing links to copies of three of my published papers. They aren't necessarily dazzling exemplars of Perfect Publications. (I am in no danger of winning the Nobel Prize in Statistics.) But they will give you some idea of what's expected in academic prose. You're provided with the papers in their entirety; remember that for this course you will not be writing about data analysis and conclusions.

PAPER #1. "Infrastructure and Internet Inclusiveness as Determinants of e-commerce Expansion." A short and recent (2023) paper written with Dr. Fred Augustine, from the Journal of Management and Engineering Integration.

PAPER #2 "The Connection Between Race and Called Strikes and Balls." Baseball!! A 2013 paper from the Journal of Sports Economics. Co-author is Jeff Hamrick, a Stetson alum.

PAPER #3 "Did C.S. Lewis Write The Dark Tower?" Published in 2009 in the Austrian Journal of Statistics (but in English). This paper started as co-author Jeff Thompson's senior research.