Statistical Tools to Help Humans
Meet statistics major and Chinese and economics minor Asa Wolf Ferguson
Hometown: Brooklyn, New York
Thesis adviser: Prof. Adrien Allorant [statistics]
Thesis: “Comparing Classic Parametric and Novel Machine-Learning Techniques to Analyze Survival Data: an Application to Historical PopulationBased HIV Surveys in Sub-Saharan: Africa”
What it’s about: Applying a statistical method from the high peaks of theory to a dataset from the far fields of applied public health.
What it’s really about: Learning more about risk factors for HIV.
Influential class: Prof. Hyong Rhew [Chinese]’s Early Chinese Philosophical Texts blew my mind. We read documents compiled two millennia ago, in a moment wracked by violence and famine. Watching humans stand and teach in the face of chaos was incredible.
Groups or clubs: Before COVID, there used to be a mathematics colloquium where students came together to hang out and listen to student talks about mathematical concepts. This year, we revived the colloquium and made uniforms for the math Renn Fayre softball team, which made it to the quarter finals!
Influential book: Zhuangzi. In the book, Daoist sages and students write about the difficulty of making sense of an inexplicable, terrifying, and beautiful world, the trust and acceptance that one must have in their own body, and the importance of wandering without a destination.
Awards, fellowships, grants: Reed College Science Research Fellowship, Economics Summer Research Program Fellowship, Phi Beta Kappa.
Special project: My economics research went to the heart of local politics. The Oregon Constitution has a kicker provision requiring the state to return tax revenues above forecasted amounts to taxpayers should a surplus exceed two percent. The government incurs the cost of returning excess funds, effectively punishing Oregon during windfalls. Working with Dr. Jon Rork and the North Star Civic Foundation, I lent credence to claims that that unpredictable swings in capital gains were a large factor in prediction errors. This project culminated in a presentation to the Oregon state economist and a publication of our findings.
What’s next?: I will be working as a Director’s Financial Analyst at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau! I’m eager to learn more about the meat of the regulatory process—and excited to use my statistical knowledge as a tool to help humans.
Tags: Academics, Students, Thesis, What is a Reedie?