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- Member of: Theses and Dissertations
Description
This thesis dives into the world of machine learning by attempting to create an application that will accurately predict whether or not a sneaker will resell at a profit. To begin this study, I first researched different machine learning algorithms to determine which would be best for this project. After ultimately deciding on using an artificial neural network, I then moved on to collecting data, using StockX and Twitter. StockX is a platform where individuals can post and resell shoes, while also providing statistics and analytics about each pair of shoes. I used StockX to retrieve data about the actual shoe, which involved retrieving data for the network feature variables: gender, brand, and retail price. Additionally, I also retrieved the data for the average deadstock price for each shoe, which describes what the mean price of new, unworn shoes are selling for on StockX. This data was used with the retail price data to determine whether or not a shoe has been, on average, selling for a profit. I used Twitter’s API to retrieve links to different shoes on StockX along with retrieving the number of favorites and retweets each of those links had. These metrics were used to account for ‘hype’ of the shoe, with shoes traditionally being more profitable the larger the hype surrounding them. After preprocessing the data, I trained the model using a randomized 80% of the data. On average, the model had about a 65-70% accuracy range when tested with the remaining 20% of the data. Once the model was optimized, I saved it and uploaded it to a web application that took in user input for the five feature variables, tested the datapoint using the model, and outputted the confidence in whether or not the shoe would generate a profit.
From a technical perspective, I used Python for the whole project, while also using HTML/CSS for the front-end of the application. As for key packages, I used Keras, an open source neural network library to build the model; data preprocessing was done using sklearn’s various subpackages. All charts and graphs were done using data visualization libraries matplotlib and seaborn. These charts provided insight as to what the final dataset looked like. They showed how the brand distribution is relatively close to what it should be, while the gender distribution was heavily skewed. Future work on this project would involve expanding the dataset, automating the entirety of the data retrieval process, and finally deploying the project on the cloud for users everywhere to use the application.
From a technical perspective, I used Python for the whole project, while also using HTML/CSS for the front-end of the application. As for key packages, I used Keras, an open source neural network library to build the model; data preprocessing was done using sklearn’s various subpackages. All charts and graphs were done using data visualization libraries matplotlib and seaborn. These charts provided insight as to what the final dataset looked like. They showed how the brand distribution is relatively close to what it should be, while the gender distribution was heavily skewed. Future work on this project would involve expanding the dataset, automating the entirety of the data retrieval process, and finally deploying the project on the cloud for users everywhere to use the application.
ContributorsShah, Shail (Author) / Meuth, Ryan (Thesis director) / Nakamura, Mutsumi (Committee member) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
Abstract: The Ultimate Fighting Championship or UFC as it is commonly known, was founded in 1993 and has quickly built itself into the world's foremost authority on all things MMA (mixed martial arts) related. With pay-per-view and cable television deals in hand, the UFC has become a huge competitor in the sports market, rivaling the popularity of boxing for almost a decade. As with most other sports, the UFC has seen an influx of various analytics and data science over the past five to seven years. We see this revolution in football with the broadcast first down markers, basketball with tracking player movement, and baseball with locating pitches for strikes and balls, and now the UFC has partnered with statistics company Fightmetric, to provide in-depth statistical analysis of its fights. ESPN has their win probability metrics, and statistical predictive modeling has begun to spread throughout sports. All these stats were made to showcase the information about a fighter that one wouldn't typically know, giving insight into how the fight might go. But, can these fights be predicted? Based off of the research of prior individuals and combining the thought processes of relevant research into other sports leagues, I sought to use the arsenal of statistical analyses done by Fightmetric, along with the official UFC fighter database to answer the question of whether UFC fights could be predicted. Specifically, by using only data that would be known about a fighter prior to stepping into the cage, could I predict with any degree of certainty who was going to win the fight?
ContributorsMoorman, Taylor D. (Author) / Simon, Alan (Thesis director) / Simon, Phil (Committee member) / W.P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / Department of Management and Entrepreneurship (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
The pandemic that hit in 2020 has boosted the growth of online learning that involves the booming of Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). To support this situation, it will be helpful to have tools that can help students in choosing between the different courses and can help instructors to understand what the students need. One of those tools is an online course ratings predictor. Using the predictor, online course instructors can learn the qualities that majority course takers deem as important, and thus they can adjust their lesson plans to fit those qualities. Meanwhile, students will be able to use it to help them in choosing the course to take by comparing the ratings. This research aims to find the best way to predict the rating of online courses using machine learning (ML). To create the ML model, different combinations of the length of the course, the number of materials it contains, the price of the course, the number of students taking the course, the course’s difficulty level, the usage of jargons or technical terms in the course description, the course’s instructors’ rating, the number of reviews the instructors got, and the number of classes the instructors have created on the same platform are used as the inputs. Meanwhile, the output of the model would be the average rating of a course. Data from 350 courses are used for this model, where 280 of them are used for training, 35 for testing, and the last 35 for validation. After trying out different machine learning models, wide neural networks model constantly gives the best training results while the medium tree model gives the best testing results. However, further research needs to be conducted as none of the results are not accurate, with 0.51 R-squared test result for the tree model.
ContributorsWidodo, Herlina (Author) / VanLehn, Kurt (Thesis director) / Craig, Scotty (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Management and Entrepreneurship (Contributor) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor)
Created2021-12
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 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.
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
Description
Machine learning is one of the fastest growing fields and it has applications in almost any industry. Predicting sports games is an obvious use case for machine learning, data is relatively easy to collect, generally complete data is available, and outcomes are easily measurable. Predicting the outcomes of sports events may also be easily profitable, predictions can be taken to a sportsbook and wagered on. A successful prediction model could easily turn a profit. The goal of this project was to build a model using machine learning to predict the outcomes of NBA games.
In order to train the model, data was collected from the NBA statistics website. The model was trained on games dating from the 2010 NBA season through the 2017 NBA season. Three separate models were built, predicting the winner, predicting the total points, and finally predicting the margin of victory for a team. These models learned on 80 percent of the data and validated on the other 20 percent. These models were trained for 40 epochs with a batch size of 15.
The model for predicting the winner achieved an accuracy of 65.61 percent, just slightly below the accuracy of other experts in the field of predicting the NBA. The model for predicting total points performed decently as well, it could beat Las Vegas’ prediction 50.04 percent of the time. The model for predicting margin of victory also did well, it beat Las Vegas 50.58 percent of the time.
In order to train the model, data was collected from the NBA statistics website. The model was trained on games dating from the 2010 NBA season through the 2017 NBA season. Three separate models were built, predicting the winner, predicting the total points, and finally predicting the margin of victory for a team. These models learned on 80 percent of the data and validated on the other 20 percent. These models were trained for 40 epochs with a batch size of 15.
The model for predicting the winner achieved an accuracy of 65.61 percent, just slightly below the accuracy of other experts in the field of predicting the NBA. The model for predicting total points performed decently as well, it could beat Las Vegas’ prediction 50.04 percent of the time. The model for predicting margin of victory also did well, it beat Las Vegas 50.58 percent of the time.
ContributorsGarretson, Samuel Burkett (Author) / Meuth, Ryan (Thesis director) / Nakamura, Mutsumi (Committee member) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Dean, W.P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Department of Management and Entrepreneurship (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05