Sterling College junior Aaron Pinkerton of Minneola, Kansas, was one of eight math majors from across the United States selected for a research experience for undergraduates at California State University, Fresno. In it, he and two other students worked under the guidance of Dr. Steve Chung, assistant professor of mathematics at Fresno State, to create a mathematical tool that would accurately predict the success rate of endovenous laser ablation given factors of the surgery.

“We [took] results from past surgeries that had happened in Fresno and were trying to find a way that would predict the success of a surgery. We were trying to find a tool that doctors could use; they could plug in data from old surgeries and tell their patients ‘This is how likely it is for this surgery to be successful,’” said Pinkerton.

Beginning with two weeks of classes on the Bayesian method and training on the statistical software R, Pinkerton and his two fellow researchers spent a significant amount of time studying past experiments as to not replicate work that had already been completed, learning how to predict outcomes, and how to code for specific predictions. This was Pinkerton’s first time coding.

“It was a big learning curve. I had fun. I’m glad I’ve had that experience going forward,” said Pinkerton.

At the end of the eight weeks, Pinkerton and his colleagues left with a model that worked well and showed that the Bayesian logistic approach “could predict the outcomes [of the surgeries] better than parametric logistic regression. There is definitely room for continued study and fine tuning,” said Pinkeron.

Through the guidance of Dr. Chung, they have a paper that is in the process of being published through peer review. The group also presented their research in a special session on undergraduate research at the Joint Mathematics Meeting, the largest annual math conference in the world.

Sterling College is a Christ-centered, four-year college located in Sterling, Kansas, with a mission to develop creative and thoughtful leaders who understand a maturing Christian faith. For more information, visit www.sterling.edu.