A final year Ghanaian student at the Macalester College in the United States, Kwame Fynn, is making Ghana proud in the US.
Kwame Fynn, who is majoring in Economics and Applied Mathematics and Statistics, was a student of Ghana International School in Accra and has been spotted by his university in what could be described as a breakthrough research work.
Kwame, the son of the Administrator of the District Assemblies Common Fund (DACF), was spotted by the university as a young man who is full of potential that could be tapped for development and excellence in various fields of endeavour.
The university’s position stems from the fact that the Ghanaian student’s research paper on the career longevity of professional basketball players has been used extensively by one of America’s biggest selling and influential magazines, ESPN, which has found the research material very useful for lovers of basketball.
The university has also indicated its excitement as the research material was now a top result of a Google search of “NBA survival analysis”—pretty heady stuff for young statisticians, who need information on basketball.
Also, the research material has been accepted by NBA as a valuable and credible material in the development of basketball.
It was carried out with another student,Morgan Sonnenschein.
Survival analysis is often used in medicine, says Mr Fynn, who is majoring in Economics as well as Applied Mathematics and Statistics: “Survival analysis looks at what factors shape people’s length of survival.”
Although many students in Math, Professor Victor Addona’s Modern Statistics course, chose a medical topic, Fynn and Sonnenschein successfully spun their basketball idea.
Addona was enthusiastic about the idea, says Sonnerschein—another Applied Math and Statistics major—and “really helpful with the questions that came up,” adding, “The small class environment we have at Mac was also beneficial.”
Sonnenschein, who graduated last December, is a test analyst in Healthcare Information Technology for Cerner Corporation in Kansas City, Missouri. Fynn, set to graduate in May, will join Goldman Sachs Asset Management in New York as an analyst.
