Barrett, The Honors College at Arizona State University proudly showcases the work of undergraduate honors students by sharing this collection exclusively with the ASU community.

Barrett accepts high performing, academically engaged undergraduate students and works with them in collaboration with all of the other academic units at Arizona State University. All Barrett students complete a thesis or creative project which is an opportunity to explore an intellectual interest and produce an original piece of scholarly research. The thesis or creative project is supervised and defended in front of a faculty committee. Students are able to engage with professors who are nationally recognized in their fields and committed to working with honors students. Completing a Barrett thesis or creative project is an opportunity for undergraduate honors students to contribute to the ASU academic community in a meaningful way.

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Description
Digital transformation can be defined as, “the acceleration of business activities, processes, competencies, and models to fully leverage the changes and opportunities of digital technologies and their impact in a strategic and prioritized way,” (Edmead, Mark, and IDG Contributor Network, 2016). Following the industrial revolution, digital transformation has taken shape

Digital transformation can be defined as, “the acceleration of business activities, processes, competencies, and models to fully leverage the changes and opportunities of digital technologies and their impact in a strategic and prioritized way,” (Edmead, Mark, and IDG Contributor Network, 2016). Following the industrial revolution, digital transformation has taken shape as the current revolution and innovative process. When industry’s and businesses engage in digital transformation, they create disruption and pave the way for enhanced customer value, efficient operational processes, and innovative business models. The prospect of this thesis is to: (1) understand how digital transformation strategy helps to propel innovation for the self-driving car, (2) understand how this innovation will create value in the grand schema for digital transformation, (3) develop a GIS-based (location analytics) study to understand the market opportunity for such technology and innovation. We outline how digital transformation as a whole represents a modern form of creative destruction, that is rewarding to businesses who engage in transformation for efficiency and innovation, and addresses the implications of those that do not. We discuss how digital transformation has affected the auto industry to invest in innovating self-driving cars. Finally, we perform location analytics to develop an opportunity analysis in five big markets around the Phoenix Metropolitan area in the State of Arizona to identify the potential markets for self-driving cars. We conclude this study with a discussion on how technology strategy is transforming the world.
ContributorsReichman, Allison (Author) / Satpathy, Asish (Thesis director) / Deitrick, Stephanie (Committee member) / Department of Supply Chain Management (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-12
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Description
Appointment scheduling in health care systems is a well-established domain, however, the top commercial services neglect scheduling analytics. This project explores the benefit of utilizing data analysis to equip health care offices with insights on how to improve their existing schedules. The insights are generated by comparing patients’ preferred appointment

Appointment scheduling in health care systems is a well-established domain, however, the top commercial services neglect scheduling analytics. This project explores the benefit of utilizing data analysis to equip health care offices with insights on how to improve their existing schedules. The insights are generated by comparing patients’ preferred appointment times with the current schedule coverage and calculating utilization of past appointments. While untested in the field, the project yielded promising results using generated sample data as a proof of concept for the benefits of using data analytics to remove deficiencies in a health care office’s schedule.
ContributorsBowman, Jedde James (Author) / Chen, Yinong (Thesis director) / Balasooriya, Janaka (Committee member) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
Introduction: Diabetes Mellitus (DM) is a significant health problem in the United States, with over 20 million adults diagnosed with the condition. Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus, characterized by insulin resistance, in particular has been associated with various adverse conditions such as chronic kidney disease and peripheral artery disease. The presence

Introduction: Diabetes Mellitus (DM) is a significant health problem in the United States, with over 20 million adults diagnosed with the condition. Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus, characterized by insulin resistance, in particular has been associated with various adverse conditions such as chronic kidney disease and peripheral artery disease. The presence of Type 2 Diabetes in an individual is also associated with various risk factors such as genetic markers and ethnicity. Native Americans, in particular, are more susceptible to Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus, with Native Americans having over two times the likelihood to present with Type 2 DM than non Hispanic whites. Of worry is the Pima Indian population in Arizona, which has the highest prevalence of Type 2 DM in the world. There have been many risk factors associated with the population such as genetic markers and lifestyle changes, but there has not been much research on the utilization of raw data to find the most pertinent factors for diabetes incidence.

Objective: There were three main objectives of the study. One objective was to elucidate potential new relationships via linear regression. Another objective was to determine which factors were indicative of Type 2 DM in the population. Finally, the last objective was to compare the incidence of Type 2 DM in the dataset to trends seen elsewhere.

Methods: The dataset was uploaded from an open source site with citation onto Python. The dataset, created in 1990, was composed of 768 female patients across 9 different attributes (Number of Pregnancies, Plasma Glucose Levels, Systolic Blood Pressure, Triceps Skin Thickness, Insulin Levels, BMI, Diabetes Pedigree Function, Age and Diabetes Presence (0 or 1)). The dataset was then cleaned using mean or median imputation. Post cleaning, linear regression was done to assess the relationships between certain factors in the population and assessed via the probability statistic for significance, with the exclusion of the Diabetes Pedigree Function and Diabetes Presence. Reverse stepwise logistic regression was used to determine the most pertinent factors for Type 2 DM via the Akaike Information Criterion and through the statistical significance in the model. Finally, data from the Center of Disease Control (CDC) Diabetes Surveillance was assessed for relationships with Female DM Percenatge in Pinal County through Obesity or through Physical Inactivity via simple logistic regression for statistical significance.

Results: The majority of the relationships found were statistically significant with each other. The most pertinent factors of Type 2 DM in the dataset were the number of pregnancies, the plasma glucose levels as well as the Blood Pressure. Via the USDS Data from the CDC, the relationships between Female DM Percentage and the obesity and inactivity percentages were statistically significant.

Conclusion: The trends found in the study matched the trends found in the literature. Per the results, recommendations for better diabetes control include more medical education as well as better blood sugar monitoring.With more analysis, there can be more done for checking other factors such as genetic factors and epidemiological analysis. In conclusion, the study accomplished its main objectives.
ContributorsKondury, Kasyap Krishna (Author) / Scotch, Matthew (Thesis director) / Aliste, Marcela (Committee member) / College of Health Solutions (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
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Description
Machine learning is the process of training a computer with algorithms to learn from data and make informed predictions. In a world where large amounts of data are constantly collected, machine learning is an important tool to analyze this data to find patterns and learn useful information from it. Machine

Machine learning is the process of training a computer with algorithms to learn from data and make informed predictions. In a world where large amounts of data are constantly collected, machine learning is an important tool to analyze this data to find patterns and learn useful information from it. Machine learning applications expand to numerous fields; however, I chose to focus on machine learning with a business perspective for this thesis, specifically e-commerce.

The e-commerce market utilizes information to target customers and drive business. More and more online services have become available, allowing consumers to make purchases and interact with an online system. For example, Amazon is one of the largest Internet-based retail companies. As people shop through this website, Amazon gathers huge amounts of data on its customers from personal information to shopping history to viewing history. After purchasing a product, the customer may leave reviews and give a rating based on their experience. Performing analytics on all of this data can provide insights into making more informed business and marketing decisions that can lead to business growth and also improve the customer experience.
For this thesis, I have trained binary classification models on a publicly available product review dataset from Amazon to predict whether a review has a positive or negative sentiment. The sentiment analysis process includes analyzing and encoding the human language, then extracting the sentiment from the resulting values. In the business world, sentiment analysis provides value by revealing insights into customer opinions and their behaviors. In this thesis, I will explain how to perform a sentiment analysis and analyze several different machine learning models. The algorithms for which I compared the results are KNN, Logistic Regression, Decision Trees, Random Forest, Naïve Bayes, Linear Support Vector Machines, and Support Vector Machines with an RBF kernel.
ContributorsMadaan, Shreya (Author) / Meuth, Ryan (Thesis director) / Nakamura, Mutsumi (Committee member) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor, Contributor) / Dean, W.P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
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Description
In March 2019, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report describing the critical importance of the next decade in mitigating the effects of climate change. From a consumer perspective, the most impactful method of reducing greenhouse gas emissions is by altering and/or reducing usage of

In March 2019, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report describing the critical importance of the next decade in mitigating the effects of climate change. From a consumer perspective, the most impactful method of reducing greenhouse gas emissions is by altering and/or reducing usage of personal and public transportation. Despite the significant technological advances in vehicle electrification, vehicle mileage, and hybrid technology, there is a gap in analysis performed about the relationship between oil prices and electric vehicle sales. This can be largely attributed to the large variation in oil and gas prices within the last decade and the short timeframe in which electric vehicles have been available to the average consumer. In addition to oil prices, significant driving factors of consumer electric vehicle purchases include battery range, availability and accessibly of charging infrastructure, and tax incentives. While consumers clearly have a significant role to play in driving electric vehicle sales, by virtue of the time commitment required to research and develop these emerging technologies, manufacturers have an arguably greater role in determining the market share EVs possess. The concept of “market disruption” versus “market replacement” is an intriguing explanation for the failure of electric vehicles, which as of early 2019 held a market share of less than 2%, to become the primary mode of transportation for most Americans, despite their wide-ranging financial and societal benefits, which will be a key challenge for the industry to overcome in the years to come.
ContributorsStout, Julia (Author) / Jennings, Cheryl (Thesis director) / Metcalfe, Carly (Committee member) / Industrial, Systems & Operations Engineering Prgm (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05