Over the summer, Ely Hahami ’23 published an economics research paper in the International Journal of High School Research (IJHSR). Hahami shared that being recognized on the international stage was very exciting for him.
The paper initially started off as a project for Hahami’s Honors Calculus Based Probability and Statistics class’s Spring Term final project. His math teacher, Doug Piper, gave the class the choice to analyze and visualize a data set of their choice. Hahami chose a data set from the stock market. “I used the R programming language to [analyze] the statistics, confidence intervals, and other tests to show which stock sector is the most profitable for investors,” Hahami said.
As Hahami continued to work on the paper, his interest grew, and he started to dive deeper into the topic of his paper. Ultimately, Hahami refined his paper during the summer after he had finished class to submit it to the IJHSR. Since the IJHSR is a competitive platform for students to publish their work, Hahami put in great amounts of effort to make sure every little detail of the paper was accurate and precise.
Before the paper was published, it was peer reviewed by three professors: a college professor who taught math and computer science, and two others who had PhDs in math and statistics. “I thought the peer review process was very useful,” Hahami noted, “There would be similar research opportunities in college, so I believe that getting feedback from experts in the field would be beneficial to strengthen my research skills, especially on [how] to more effectively convey information in official research papers.”
Based on his research, Hahami concluded that investing in the financial services sector would be the most profitable to investors. Hahami explained that his findings have important connections to the real world: As technology advances, “the concept of applying data science, technology, and artificial intelligence to analyze the most profitable sector in the financial markets has been appearing more frequently,” he said.
Looking forward, Hahami hopes to continue exploring the different fields of economics. Finally, Hahami wants to shout out Piper for giving him the opportunity to pursue this project and aiding him throughout the process of writing the paper.