Matching Items (3)
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- All Subjects: Probability
- Creators: Goegan, Brian
Description
Early in the development of American's interest in athletics there has been a conditioning of the mind toward promoting and rewarding male athletes, while ignoring and undercutting female athletes. There is substantial evidence of the existence of monetary and promotional time given to male athletes and very little support given to their female counterparts. The gender pay gap in professional sports is a culmination of gender discrimination within the entire sports realm. It appears to start at the high school level, continue on into the collegiate sector, and is finally magnified in the professional arena. In high school, male sport's programs are given preference to game and practice times, locations, as well as promotions. In college, male athletic programs are advertised and highlighted as being the premier events to go to. This is also seen in college bookstores with the dominating male event merchandise for sale. In the professional arena, the astronomical value of male athletes' salaries, which go into the multi-millions, makes the gender pay gap glaring. These discrepancies between men and women at each level of sport are in part caused by the underlying informal systems or societal norms and values currently present and encouraged in American culture and communities. These informal systems are often countered by formal systems, such as Title IX. Change cannot truly take place until the two systems are aligned. Thankfully, society today seems to be headed in a more equitable direction; therefore, promoting hope and promise for a more equal future between male and female athletes and their programs.
ContributorsBaldwin, Macy Jeanette (Author) / Goegan, Brian (Thesis director) / Eaton, John (Committee member) / School of Accountancy (Contributor) / WPC Graduate Programs (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-05
Description
This paper proposes that voter decision making is determined by more than just the policy positions adopted by the candidates in the election as proposed by Antony Downs (1957). Using a vector valued voting model proposed by William Foster (2014), voter behavior can be described by a mathematical model. Voters assign scores to candidates based on both policy and non-policy considerations, then voters then decide which candidate they support based on which has a higher candidate score. The traditional assumption that most of the population will vote is replaced by a function describing the probability of voting based on candidate scores assigned by individual voters. If the voter's likelihood of voting is not certain, but rather modelled by a sigmoid curve, it has radical implications on party decisions and actions taken during an election cycle. The model also includes a significant interaction term between the candidate scores and the differential between the scores which enhances the Downsian model. The thesis is proposed in a similar manner to Downs' original presentation, including several allegorical and hypothetical examples of the model in action. The results of the model reveal that single issue voters can have a significant impact on election outcomes, and that the weight of non-policy considerations is high enough that political parties would spend large sums of money on campaigning. Future research will include creating an experiment to verify the interaction terms, as well as adjusting the model for individual costs so that more empirical analysis may be completed.
ContributorsCoulter, Jarod Maxwell (Author) / Foster, William (Thesis director) / Goegan, Brian (Committee member) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor) / Department of Economics (Contributor) / Dean, W.P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
This paper analyzes responses to a survey using a modified fourfold pattern of preference to determine if implicit information, once made explicit, is practically significant in nudging irrational decision makers towards more rational decisions. Respondents chose between two scenarios and an option for indifference for each of the four questions from the fourfold pattern with expected value being implicit information. Then respondents were asked familiarity with expected value and given the same four questions again but with the expected value for each scenario then explicitly given. Respondents were asked to give feedback if their answers had changed and if the addition of the explicit information was the reason for that change. Results found the addition of the explicit information in the form of expected value to be practically significant with ~90% of respondents who changed their answers giving that for the reason. In the implicit section of the survey, three out of four of the questions had a response majority of lower expected value answers given compared to the alternative. In the explicit section of the survey, all four questions achieved a response majority of higher expected value answers given compared to the alternative. In moving from the implicit to the explicit section, for each question, the scenario with lower expected value experienced a decrease in percentage of responses, and the scenario with higher expected value and indifference between the scenarios both experienced an increase in percentage of responses.
ContributorsJohnson, Matthew (Author) / Goegan, Brian (Thesis director) / Foster, William (Committee member) / School of Sustainability (Contributor) / Economics Program in CLAS (Contributor) / Dean, W.P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05