Money = Wins? (Sports Edition) by Kevin Pan and Ryder Swenson
Money, in the form of standardized average annual team payroll, does typically exhibit a fair amount of impact on a team’s winning percentage across soccer (football) leagues globally, but this becomes less clear when looking specifically at American Sports. Moreover, pumping in money to a sports team cannot be shown to directly cause an increase in winning, and there are multiple skill specific statistics that exhibit much higher correlations with winning percentage. [Report]
The Economics of Basketball: Unraveling Revenue Generated in the NBA by Pierre Joseph and Matteo Di Mauro
With the increased revenues being generated by the teams in the NBA today, there are many valuable questions one can attempt to answer regarding why NBA teams are now generating so much money. The goal of this project, in particular, is to try to answer the question of which NBA team metric has the best correlation with the revenues of NBA teams for a given year. We attempted to answer this question by analyzing the four NBA team metrics of win percentage, fan attendance, social media engagement, and city population and determining their correlations with the revenues of NBA teams over the course of 10 seasons. However, this process was much more complex than first anticipated and, as you will soon see, did not give us any straightforward answers to our original question. [Report]
So how does Spotify know what we want to listen to, anyway? by Scout Chen and Kenna Lee
Spotify’s recommendation system is based on a two-part algorithm: filtering, then generating a user profile. These two factors are able to categorize the platform’s songs and users to better match listeners to songs that Spotify thinks users would enjoy. However, the means by which this algorithm is able to function depends on the collection of a wide range of consumer data, which spells out concerns for the data privacy rights of individual users. [Report]
Does Your Taste in Music Say a Lot About You? For Brown University Students, the Answer Is More Complicated Than You May Think by Violet Dellinger and Andrew Hudak
We collected one hundred Brown students’ top music genres, and then asked them questions about their personality and political ideology. The results showcase Brown’s student body as a diverse group, while highlighting established connections between music and personality theory. [Report]
How does Music Taste Differ Worldwide? by Daniel Demessie and Brandon Sun
Our research analyzes how the popularity of certain music genres and artists changes depending on the consumer’s location. While our previous question focused on the popularity of genres of users in different regions of the United States, we shifted our question to focusing on differences depending on the popularity of genres in different countries. We analyzed two datasets that used Spotify user data to map this correlation through choropleths. The methods used included a combination of the Pandas and PyPlot frameworks in Python because of the size of these datasets. Our analysis found that the popularity of an artist often correlates with the primary language of the country. However, there were instances where the popularity of an artist was instead demonstrated through the cultural similarities between the user’s country and the artist’s country of origin. [Report]
Financial Success After College by Gianna Mendelson, Alexandra Hunnius, and Sydney Rondeau
We collected data from various online databases that showcased different aspects of one's college experience. Seeking information on how different aspects affected a person's “success” after college provided results that proved that success is not online qualifies by salary but by multiple factors in one's life. [Report]
Do Students Actually Need Good Sleep to Perform Well? by Hayzie Chu, Olga Fidele Teta, Loang Chiang
Our project seeks to investigate this question with a comprehensive approach. While the primary focus lies on academic performance, we will also be discussing how sleep influences social interactions, mental well-being, and overall life satisfaction. The relationship between sleep patterns and academic performance is multifaceted, with a growing body of research indicating that poor sleep quality and insufficient rest are associated with diminished cognitive functioning and academic outcomes. However, while these associations are well-documented, it is crucial to recognize that correlation does not imply causation. With growing evidence showing that consistent and high-quality sleep improves cognitive function, the narrative of sleep deprivation as a necessary trade-off for success is worth re-examining. [Report]