Project by: Natalie Goncher (12th Grade)
Project Advisor: Tom Murphy
Student(s)’s Advisor(s): Tom Murphy
Please write a description of the project you are proposing. Why do you want to take this on, and what do you hope to learn?
I’ve always been interested in psychology and economics, which is why I decided to take a course at Columbia University that encompassed it over the summer. The class, Mind and Markets: Finance, Economics, and Psychology, acted as an interdisciplinary study of how the realities of human psychology engage with the economy, financial markets, institutions, and firms. Through my time spent at that program, I became particularly interested in sociology (the observation of the development, structure, and functioning of human society) and economic statistics (the collection, processing, compilation, dissemination, and analysis of economic data). I hope to review and operationalize my own ideas through experimentation regarding the following and how they intersect with one another:
– Finance, the valuation of business and investments
– Investing, markets, trading, and alternative investment management strategies such as hedge funds, private equity, and real estate
– Microeconomics, including economic decision making and choices about risk and gambles
– Behavioral economics and heuristics
– Neuroeconomics and neurofinance
– Game theory, bargaining, negotiation, and strategic decision making
WORK PRODUCT AND FINAL REFLECTION:
The results I have concluded from creating a financial portrait of our community and determining the financial literacy of our student body are embodied in the following google forms.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1HPqxd7is6RbyKCdFUZ54dIHwoaLBM-ckaqdsmPEK1g0/edit#responses
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1OO-7nZdF_STbrQt_JOeDex6Vt-mWbZsb9tXZpJMh-LI/edit#responses
These two surveys provide a glimpse into the economic privilege that many in our school community share and how such can impact how one considers and ultimately makes financial decisions.
TRIMESTER 1 UPDATE:
From my experiences throughout Trimester 1, I have investigated further into finance, statistics, and behavioral economics. From reading Charles Wheelan’s “Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data” book, I have been able to understand statistics in the context of real, exciting events in our world. I have come to understand the economic decision making of individuals and learned more about world markets through documentaries and informational videos. More specifically, I have learned how statistics is used in order to make more informed decisions beyond the subjective along with the challenges that come with an increased number of variables within one experiment. Beyond this I have learned more about standard error (the disparities between a sample size and the overall population), standard deviation (a calculated margin of error for an experiment), and the Central Limit Theorem (which suggests that a bell curve, a graph of normal distribution, should occur when one is assessing a random sample size). In this coming Trimester 2, I will expand on the work I completed during the first part of this project and the knowledge I have gained by assessing the financial literacy of our student body through a google form and its subsequent implications on how my peers act in our society. I ultimately want to connect what I learned to our community and transform the lessons I have come to understand into more digestible terms.
Beyond this work, I have also been assessing my own financial literacy and knowledge by taking the National Financial Capacity Tests: https://www.financialeducatorscouncil.org/financial-literacy-test/. The questions from these assessments have made my reflection on what I know and understand what I still need to learn. The questions being asked have influenced the way I have created the surveys that I will send out to the student body. I plan on sending out two surveys: one used to create a financial portrait of our community and how that subsequently influences student’s financial decisions and perspective.
ORIGINAL PROPOSAL(S):
Project by: Natalie Goncher (12th Grade)
Faculty Advisor: Tom Murphy
Trimester 2
Critical thinking, creativity, citizenship, and courage are essential LREI learning values. Explain how you’ll draw on at least one of these values to complete your proposed project?
Critical thinking plays a big part in understanding finance and statistics. In addition, putting these two into digestible terms will be a challenge, both in terms of my own understanding along with sharing the work that I do. Creativity also plays a role in this project as I am creating a google form whose findings will be unique to our student body and different than the data I have seen be collected before.
What is your proposed outcome? How will you be able to demonstrate successful completion of this Project? How do you plan to share your learnings with the larger LREI community (e.g., exhibit of work, a poster of learnings, performance, etc.)?
Through this honors project, I plan on combining lessons of finance and sociology in order to have a more comprehensive understanding of economics and the connection it has to social science. I will be conducting research and developing projects that will engage with the rest of the student body assist in my learning of the material.
Please provide a general outline that indicates your work plan for the trimester? What are some of the key project benchmarks (i.e., goals that will help to ensure that you finish the project)?
Stemming from the work I completed watching finance documentaries, investigating more into behavioral economics and why we make the decisions we do, as well as reading “Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data” throughout Trimester 1, during Trimester 2, I will formulate my findings into an assessment of the financial literacy of our student body by creating a survey. From the collection of this data, I will analyze and write a reflection on what it reveals.
When do you plan on meeting?
Weekly (every Monday during second lunch)
Trimester 1:
Please write a description of the project you are proposing. Why do you want to take this on, and what do you hope to learn?
I’ve always been interested in psychology and economics, which is why I decided to take a course at Columbia University that encompassed it over the summer. The class, Mind and Markets: Finance, Economics, and Psychology, acted as an interdisciplinary study of how the realities of human psychology engage with the economy, financial markets, institutions, and firms. Through my time spent at that program, I became particularly interested in sociology (the observation of the development, structure, and functioning of human society) and economic statistics (the collection, processing, compilation, dissemination, and analysis of economic data). I hope to review and operationalize my own ideas through experimentation regarding the following and how they intersect with one another:
– Finance, the valuation of business and investments
– Investing, markets, trading, and alternative investment management strategies such as hedge funds, private equity, and real estate
– Microeconomics, including economic decision making and choices about risk and gambles
– Behavioral economics and heuristics
– Neuroeconomics and neurofinance
– Game theory, bargaining, negotiation, and strategic decision making
What is your proposed outcome? How will you be able to demonstrate successful completion of this Project?
Through this honors project, I plan on combining lessons of finance and sociology in order to have a more comprehensive understanding of economics and the connection it has to social science. I will be conducting research and developing projects that will engage with the rest of the student body assist in my learning of the material.
When do you plan on meeting?
Weekly
Natalie, there are lot of really interesting and intersecting ideas here. One question for me as it relates to the title is that I’m not sure I see the neuroscience connection as one that any investigation you undertake can really address. If we take neuroscience to be any or all of the sciences, which deal with the structure or function of the nervous system and brain, it’s not clear to me how you could make anything but the most indirect claims. There are possible neuropsychology connections here, but it is unclear how you will be able to make claims about structure and function of the nervous system and brain. It is possible that your research of others’ work will lead you to studies that have, but I don’t see how the assessment you plan to do can do this. Also, your description of interest and intent seems to have focused on the connection with sociology. Is your focus perhaps, “The Sociology of Economics and Statistics?”