News and Information
Biostatistics students honored at international competition
April 16, 2018
Kayla Hawkins and Joe Lorenz, both graduate students in the Master of Science in Biostatistics at GVSU, recently finished in 2nd place at an international analytics competition involving 60 teams. Kayla and Joe are mentored by Biostatistics Director, Dr. Robert Downer. The student’s presented their project titled, “Getting to Know the No-show: Predictive Modeling of Missing a Medical Appointment” at the SAS Global Forum in Denver Colorado. The student symposium competition showcased data analysis and statistical computing skills through the use of the Statistical Analysis System (SAS).
In this year’s competition, teams of students and a faculty mentor were instructed to find a public data set and write a SAS-based analytics paper on the data. The top eight teams from a set of 60 teams from around the world were invited to present at the conference. The eight presentations were evaluated by a panel of judges. The 2nd place finish by the GVSU team was announced in a session of over 4,000 people. Kayla and Joe’s analysis included over 10,000 patients and found that there were distinct subpopulations for missing a medical appointment based on adulthood and whether a patient had several appointments in the three month study period. Variables impacting the probability of a no-show included alcoholism, lack of a reminder, and whether the appointment was scheduled on the same day as it occurred.
Four other students from the 2018 GVSU Biostatistics graduating class participated in the SAS Global Forum. Nathan Bernicchi, Abigail Chatfield, and Brandon George presented co-authored papers based on internships with GVSU Biostatistics alumni mentors at Spectrum Health. Also, five other alumni of the GVSU Biostatistics Master’s program participated at the conference.