CMU Graduate Student Seminar

Fall 2017

Organizer

If you would like to give a talk, please email me.

Meeting Times

Tuesday, 4:00–4:50pm, in Pearce 227.

Schedule

Date Speaker Title (click Title for Abstract or scroll down)
9/5/2017 C-Y. Jean Chan (CMU) Organizational Meeting at PE 206D
9/12/2017 No Seminar No Seminar
9/19/2017 Mary Martinez (OCRIE, CMU) Civil Rights and Institutional Equity
9/26/2017 David Hooley (CMU)
Ibraheem Adams (CNU)
Statistics non-Teaching Internship Experience Part I :
Auto-Owners Insurance Company (by Hooley)
MidMichigan Health (by Adams)
10/3/2017 No Seminar No Seminar
10/10/2017 Sara Andrasik (CMU)
Keith Siopes (CMU)
Statistics non-teaching Internship Experience Part II :
American Greeings (by Andrasik)
Institute for Health and Business Insight (by Siopes)
10/17/2017 Chin-I Cheng (CMU) and Jungswyan Sepanski (CMU) Statistical Consulting Center Unwrapped -- TBA
10/24/2017 Simonna Tsai (CMU)
Gajare Parinita (CMU)
Statistics non-Teaching Internship Experience Part III
Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (by Gajare)
Eastern Online (by Tsai)
10/31/2017 ... ...
11/7/2017 ... ...
11/14/2017 ... ...
11/21/2017 Jim Kowalski (Pennsylvania State University) The Hardy-Littlewood Circle Method
11/28/2017 Oluremi Abayomi (CMU) A Mesmerizing Interplay: Linear Algebra and Statistics

Abstracts

Speaker: C-Y. Jean Chan (September 5)
Title: Organizational Meeting
Abstract: Students who registered MTH 693 for the current semester or are planning or interested in doing so should come to PE 206 D for the course policy and essential guidelines for the assignments. Notice that this meeting does not take place in the usual seminar room!!

Speaker: Mary Martinez (September 19)
Title: Civil Rights and Institutional Equity
Abstract: Discrimination, harassment, and violence can affect all of us. This training will help provide you with the tools to help promote a workplace free of harassment, discrimination, and sexual misconduct, as well as discuss your responsibilities under Title IX. The trainings will help all employees recognize harassment and sexual misconduct, and provide practical tips on creating a safe, inclusive environment.

Speakers: David Hooley and Ibraheem Adams (September 26)
Title: Non-teaching Internship Experience Part I -- Auto-Owners Insurance Company (by Hooley) and MidMichigan Health (by Adams)
Abstract:
(Hooley) Auto-Owners Insurance, headquartered in Lansing, has a very reputable and thorough internship program. The company does an impressive job at creating connections with nearby universities for internship and job opportunities. I had the opportunity to spend the summer of 2017 at Auto-Owners working on the Commercial Lines Analytics team. My team focused primarily on providing data analytics support to the commercial auto, property, and liability actuaries. I had the chance to work on a predictive analytics project associated with commercial auto. I will share more about my experience at Auto-Owners including some project details, the application and hiring process, and the general work environment.
(Adams) The MidMichigan Health, headquartered in Midland, provides health services to improve the quality of life for the people of Mid-Michigan communities. MidMichigan Health also offers opportunities for research internships in data science. I interned in their Quality and Safety Department, between May-August, 2017 in Midland. The goal was to provide data analytics support to physicians and senior leadership at the core of healthcare delivery processes at MidMichigan Health. My responsibilities included data management and predictive analytics regarding patient satisfaction and mortality. The internship provided me the opportunity to apply statistical learning techniques to contribute to addressing practical problems associated with patients' health recovery and health service delivery by medical experts. I will explicate on my learning points from the internship experience, likewise how the Applied Statistics and Analytics program at Central Michigan University is well-suited to meeting the needs of industry.

Speakers: Sara Andrasik and Keith Siopes (October 10)
Title: Non-teaching Internship Experience Part II -- American Greetings (by Andrasik)
Abstract:
(Andrasik) American Greetings has been helping to make the world a more thoughtful and caring place for over 100 years. Headquartered in Cleveland, OH, the company is a leader in the greeting card industry. For the past two summers, I had the opportunity to intern in the Business Intelligence department at American Greetings. The first summer I worked on analyzing our sales data from Dollar General. This past summer, I worked on a larger team that supports our Walmart business. We worked closely with our Merchant, Sales, and Operations teams to provide the analytic support needed to make the business successful. I will share some of the projects I was responsible for, as well as discuss the culture of American Greetings as a whole and its incredible internship experience.
(Siopes) The Institute for Health and Business Insight (IHBI) is a small consulting group located here in Mt. Pleasant that specializes in the use of advanced analytics techniques to solve business problems. I have been working at the Institute for Health \& Business Insight for over two years now and have had the opportunity to work on numerous projects for various companies including Harley Davidson, Dow Chemical, and the SAS institute. Over the course of the summer semester, I was challenged with tasks which pushed me to think critically and provided me with the opportunity to apply many of the skills I have learned during my time in the Applied Statistics and Analytics program here at CMU. I invite you to listen as I share with you my experience.

Speaker: Chin-I Cheng and Jungsywan Sepanski (October 17)
Title: Statistical Consulting Center Unwrapped
Abstract: This talk reveals secrets about the Statistical Consulting Center and gives a glimpse of what research has been conducted by faculty on campus. We briefly present selected projects and statistical models employed to analyze the data in the projects, in the hope of piquing students' interest in statistical modeling and consulting.

Speakers: Simonna Tsai and Gajare Parinita (October 24)
Title: Non-teaching Internship Experience III -- Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (by Gajare) and Eastern Online (by Tsai)
Abstract:
(Gajare) CAEP assesses performance against its goals and relevant standards, tracks result over time, tests innovations and the effects of selection criteria on subsequent progress and completion, and uses results to improve program elements and processes. Before CAEP recommends any completing candidate for licensure or certification, it documents that the candidate has reached a high standard for content knowledge in the fields where certification is sought and can teach effectively with positive impacts on P-12 student learning and development. I was assessing the Impact on P-12 Learning and Development for Teacher Candidates from Central Michigan University. Also, my second project were based upon Teacher Effectiveness after Graduation. These two projects were the small part of the CAEP accreditation.
(Tsai) Eastern Online in Taipei, Taiwan is a market research consultant and survey company conducting the lifestyle and consumption survey since 1988. Our team assisted this company for investigating mobile user lifestyle project with Chunghwa Telecom carrier last year. The company recruited our team to support more projects. I will present the experiences to deal with big amount of data, data wrangling, and data mining techniques applied for the projects.

Speaker: Jim Kowalski (November 21)
Title: The Hardy-Littlewood Circle Method
Abstract: In certain combinatorial problems, a generating function can be constructed whose power series coefficients form a sequence of interest. We will discuss how some of these functions are constructed and how Cauchy's integral formula can be used to extract these coefficients. Then, for Waring's problem - concerning the representations of natural numbers as sums of $k$-th powers - we will use the Hardy Littlewood method to approximate this integral, and so the coefficients of our generating function.

Speaker: Oluremi Abayomi (November 28)
Title: A Mesmerizing Interplay: Linear Algebra and Statistics
Abstract: In this talk, focus shall be set on some selected applications of linear algebra concepts and methodologies in statistics. In particular, we will examine some of the underpinnings of statistical theory and applications in linear algebra by special highlights on: multivariate probability distributions to include the multivariate normal distribution, linear models and least squares in different fashions, principal components of a random vector and data, conditions of models and data, optimal design and multivariate random number generation.

Past seminars: Spring 2017, Fall 2016, Spring 2016, Fall 2015, Spring 2015, Fall 2014