STOR-i 2nd Year PhD student Robyn Goldsmith was selected to give a workshop to 60 nominated GCSE students from schools in Lancashire and Cumbria. Robyn’s masterclass focused on introducing methods that can be used to forecast Box Office takings, including Linear Regression and Bass Diffusion Modelling. Using real data about movies from 2022, they implemented the techniques they had learned to make their own predictions about current box office figures.

Commenting on the masterclass Robyn said “I asked them to use the forecasting techniques I introduced to predict the takings of Avatar: The Rise of Water, which has been dominating in recent box office figures. They did a fantastic job and were able to compare the positives and negatives of each method. I really enjoyed interacting with the students, their enthusiasm was great and not what you would necessarily expect from a group of teenagers so early on a Saturday morning! It was a fantastic experience.”

The masterclass finished with a Q&A where Robyn answered questions about her journey in Mathematics, Statistics and OR, what brought her to STOR-i and motivated her pursuit of a PhD.

You can find further information on the Ri Masterclasses at the following website: www.rigb.org/learning/ri-masterclasses