Lawrenceville classes are both challenging and rewarding – and often the recognition goes far beyond campus. A paper written by Ely Hahami ’23 for his Calculus-Based Statistics class has been accepted for publication in the International Journal of High School Research – and a second from his History of American Democracy class is under peer review with the Journal of Student Research. “I’m very appreciative of my teachers for introducing me to new information and I like taking learning outside the classroom,” Hahami said.

Hahami worked closely with mathematics teacher Doug Piper to prepare “Evaluating Stock Profitability and Technical Indicator Correlation: An Exploratory Data Analysis in R.” He used the R programming language to create a statistical analysis of which stock sectors are the most profitable. The paper, he said, is helpful for investors looking for the sweet spot between risk and reward.

“I really enjoyed teaching Ely last year because he was so interested in so many different things,” said Piper. “In our class, students had some freedom to choose a dataset that interested them. I think because he was so interested in financial markets, it only made sense for him to continue his work and publish this paper.”

The Fifth Former said Calculus-Based Statistics has been one of his favorite Lawrenceville classes. He especially enjoyed the collaborative atmosphere designed by Piper. Every day, the teacher would divide the class into four groups (so they would sit with someone new each day) and send them to the white board to work out homework problems. “In statistics, you would often find that there are multiple ways to approach a problem and something that I thought of, a classmate would approach differently. I thought it was really cool to learn from so many awesome, smart students,” Hahami stated.

His second paper, “Forging Democracy: The Connection between the Current Mortgage Industry and Postbellum Virginia,” examines the historic roots of today’s discriminatory lending practices in the U.S. “I thought it was really, really important to gain more understanding of historical and contemporary inequities and spread that research,” Hahami said. Hahami also enjoyed his American Democracy class with history teacher Clare Grieve, particularly the Harkness discussions that embraced multi-perspective arguments in each case.

The publication process – especially the critiques from college professors and doctoral scholars in statistics – has been “awesome.” The peer review process, Hahami said, “was very helpful and I think I learned a lot about how to convey information in an official research paper. Overall, it’s been a great experience.”

For additional information, contact Lisa M. Gillard H'17, director of public relations, at lgillard@lawrenceville.org.