The Grand Vision of Profs. Ahn and Sinha

How will your decision-making ability be affected in the face of uncertainty? How will you know what your course of action should be? These are the primary concerns that Professors Ahn and Sinha aim to address through their shared vision of better living through statistics. The dynamic duo believes that one does not have to be a mathematician to successfully employ logic and statistical rigor in decision-making.

The previous assistant professor at UC Berkeley’s Department of Industiral Engineering and Operations Research, Professor Hyun-soo Ahn, relates that his first bout teaching Business Statistics and Operations Management (OMS 301) left him feeling unfulfilled. The semester was spent teaching someone else’s material and students were not receptive.

Eager to dispel the widely held belief among business students that statistics is a dry and boring subject, Professor Ahn joined forces with Professor Amitabh Sinha, arriving at Michigan spring 2004. Together they began to draft their plan of attack for the coming winter 2005 term. Armed with a newly won grant from the National Science Foundation, a Tablet PC, and a dream to improve the teaching of decision-making sciences, the professors were determined to implement a course that students could relate to, independent of their career choice.

Channeling his exuberance for popular culture, movies, music, sports and an assortment of beverages, Professor Ahn collaborates with Professor Sinha to fulfill what they view as an obligation to provide extra value to Michigan students. The lecture notes are designed to be self contained and are kept as up to date as possible; these often feature the likes of Howard Stern “the King of Media,” the cast of Dawson’s Creek, Avril Lavigne, and other pop figures. Special “in-class” boxes denote sections students are to review before coming to class. One BBA, who refused to be named, fondly refers to these as “yellow boxes of dread.” However, the notes are designed with pedagogical concerns in mind and utilize the tablet PC as a means to interact with students as they fill in the notes by hand.

The use of case studies also finds new life under the direction of Professors Ahn and Sinha. Instead of simply letting students “have at it,” guides are constructed to accompany each case. The cases themselves function more as a background for the application of theory. The guides help students to recognize methodologies for analyzing cases and facilitate in-class discussion.

Drawing inspiration from Michael Lewis’ Moneyball, Professor Ahn and Sinha designed a case they call “Chasing Moneyball” to not only address the dearth of hypothesis testing cases, but also to create a real scale problem to which students can relate. Professor Ahn describes how Lewis’ work enlightened him to the fact that people have not been using statistics decision theory correctly: the New York Yankees’ $190 million player budget is largely run by vision and the gut instinct of the ball club’s executives. The objective of the case centers around teaching students how to set the correct hypothesis test and identify what it is that needs to be proved. This is how the “game of statistics” is accurately treated as such.

As an active concert goer, Professor Ahn realizes that even the best show can wear you out if there isn’t an intermission, a place to ground yourself. Adopting a consumer perspective, he makes a conscious effort to structure his lectures into three mini-parts, each interrupted by a story, an anecdote or joke. These breaks serve not only as intermissions to the statistic rock-opera that is OMS 301, but also function as anchor points to aid in students’ absorption of the material.

As a self professed diamond expert, Professor Ahn’s lectures encompass more than mere business situations. Upon relating the four characteristics of a good diamond (carat, cut, clarity, color), Professor Ahn professes that “the love is much more important than diamonds.” Professor Ahn then went on to perform a two-tail t-test to determine whether or not a particular jeweler’s diamonds were close to ideal. After which he pontificated on the genius of hiring a wedding planner, albeit one not as attractive as J. Lo, to do his own wedding.

Take it. Live it. Learn it.