{"id":599,"date":"2019-05-16T10:00:16","date_gmt":"2019-05-16T09:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/business-and-society\/?p=599"},"modified":"2019-05-16T10:00:16","modified_gmt":"2019-05-16T09:00:16","slug":"research-spotlight-statistics-social-benefit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/business-and-society\/2019\/05\/16\/research-spotlight-statistics-social-benefit\/","title":{"rendered":"Research in the spotlight - statistics and social benefit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>When does the research we do become research for good? In the first of our Research in the Spotlight series, we talk to <a href=\"https:\/\/researchportal.bath.ac.uk\/en\/persons\/arman-hassanniakalager\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Arman Hassanniakalager<\/a> of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bath.ac.uk\/management\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">University of Bath School of Management<\/a> about his research on football betting, and how using statistics can reduce investment risks. <\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Arman, you joined the School of Management in 2018. What brought you to Bath? <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I studied for my PhD in quantitative finance at Glasgow. A job came up at Bath and I applied \u2013 I had no idea what it was like beforehand. On my interview day, I had time to explore the city and realised how beautiful it was. So I\u2019m very happy I decided to come here<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>What are you working on right now?<\/strong> <\/em><\/p>\n<p>My core research, where I focus on writing academic papers and targeting ABS journals \u2013 that\u2019s statistics.<\/p>\n<p>But I\u2019m also working on gambling, and the risks of betting to consumers \u2013 I had a conversation with a colleague a couple of years ago about this area, and we decided to do some work together. We\u2019ve <a href=\"https:\/\/researchportal.bath.ac.uk\/en\/publications\/a-machine-learning-perspective-on-responsible-gambling\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">just had a paper published<\/a>. It\u2019s an area where there hasn\u2019t been much research done or much statistical analysis \u2013 it\u2019s a good interdisciplinary research area. Bookies make billions from gambling. It\u2019s sold to customers as entertainment \u2013 having a beer and putting a bet on the football makes it more fun \u2013 but they don\u2019t understand the real levels of risk, or the amount of profit that bookies are making, and telling people to \u201cgamble responsibly\u201d just isn\u2019t enough.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Research4Good: Arman Hassanniakalager - should gambling have a health warning?\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/330797146?dnt=1&amp;app_id=122963\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture; clipboard-write\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>What have you achieved in your academic career that you\u2019re most proud of? <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The paper I mentioned, A Machine Learning Perspective on Responsible Gambling, was published in Behavioural Public Policy which is a Cambridge University Press journal. I felt really proud to see my name on there.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m also working on a paper on Artificial Intelligence that\u2019s been through three rounds of review so far. I\u2019m hoping it will be published in the summer and when it finally is published, that will be one of my career highlights so far.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>What would you most like to achieve?<\/strong> <\/em><\/p>\n<p>A 4* publication! But also my work using statistics could have a big impact on the investment banking industry in the next 10 years. The focus is on multiple hypothesis testing \u2013 comparing a big set of alternative outcomes using statistics. In finance, the people who are giving advice are very highly paid. Despite this, there\u2019s still room for human error. The methodology we\u2019re developing replicates human wisdom using statistics, and removes that error factor, thereby making decision making more robust.<\/p>\n<p>It sounds bad to be doing research that might ultimately get rid of jobs, but the social benefit is that pension funds will be spent better. It removes the risk. The methodology can also be applied to other sectors like bioinformatics and economics.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>What inspired you to do what you do now?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I used to be a trader myself, but it didn\u2019t work out. But I thought it might work, if I could control the risk. I wanted to understand more about machine learning and its applications to finance \u2013 this was the motivation for my PhD which was self-funded. I always wanted to be a trader but the risk was too great so I\u2019ve been looking for that deeper knowledge.<\/p>\n<p>The trouble is, humans aren\u2019t very good at understanding numbers, and our education system doesn\u2019t take financial literacy nearly seriously enough. It\u2019s important to understand about money and investments and how it works \u2013 as with the gambling and where the money is actually going. I\u2019ve been doing some charitable work in this area and it\u2019s something I\u2019d like to do more of because I think people really need help.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>And finally, what\u2019s your favourite\u2026<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>book?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m currently reading <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Thinking, Fast and Slow<\/a>\u00a0by Daniel Kahnemann \u2013 it\u2019s really good in terms of understanding human psychology. I don\u2019t get fiction!<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>music<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Jazz - anything as long as it\u2019s jazz.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>football team<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Chelsea \u2013 although when I was a kid it was Real Madrid.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>place to visit<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I really like the Netherlands \u2013 it\u2019s one of the only places I\u2019d consider going to for a job. It\u2019s small but very advanced with very liberal people \u2013 and they speak English! At the moment though I\u2019m married to the University of Bath for the next five years \u2013 but it\u2019s a good place to be.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>place to work<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>By the lake on my laptop.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When does the research we do become research for good? In the first of our Research in the Spotlight series, we talk to Arman Hassanniakalager of the University of Bath School of Management about his research on football betting, and...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":943,"featured_media":601,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,66,109],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business-and-society","category-research","category-research4good"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/business-and-society\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/133\/2019\/05\/IMG_5110.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pd4Pj1-9F","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/business-and-society\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/business-and-society\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/business-and-society\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/business-and-society\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/943"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/business-and-society\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/business-and-society\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/business-and-society\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/business-and-society\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/business-and-society\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/business-and-society\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}