The Mathematics Department at UNO announces the following opportunity for (math) students who would like to work on a “real life” project in statistics and/or are interested in writing a thesis on this topic.

Methodology Review and Recommendations on Current Statistical Analysis for Determining Fair Market Values at a National Software Company

Summary

We are a large, national software company that provides software solutions to a large base of customers across North America. One of our products involves determining Fair Market Values (FMV) for common items such as clothing, electronics, household goods, etc. This FMV data is used to value items given to charities for the purpose of claiming a tax deduction. To generate FMVs, pricing information of like items is randomly collected from across the country and aggregated within our data management system. An automated statistical analysis is performed on this set of aggregated pricing information to generate the FMV.

Proposed Analysis

We are looking for an independent academic review of our methodologies. Below is a generalized list of topics that would be reviewed.

· Acceptable random sample size over geographic regions and given various data sources, i.e. various retail outlets, online auctions, etc.

· Definition of acceptable error margins

· Acceptable variance over time

· Distribution definition

Output

Analysis, conclusions, and recommendations on:

· Accuracy and statistical significance given current data collection and processing methods

· Changes possible to improve quality of data used: this could include changes to data collection and/or statistical analysis performed

If you are interested and/or want more information, contact Dora Matache, dmatache@mail.unomaha.edu