First Interdisciplinary Symposium on Statistical Challenges and Opportunities in Electronic Commerce Research; May 22-23, 2005; College Park, MD

University Of Maryland, College Park, College Park MD

Investigators

Abstract

This award supports a symposium that will extend knowledge on the computational and methodological challenges related to the collection and analysis of vast amounts of data originating from eCommerce transactions. For example, eBay, the largest and most well known online auction, hosts several million auctions a year. Researchers can access these data using web-data collection technologies, such as web spiders. Standard statistical tools are designed for data of much smaller size and often do not scale up. Traditional statistical models also do not take into account the dynamics and concurrency of events happening in a marketplace as large as the Internet. Thus, it is critical at this juncture to bring together Information Systems researchers who study eCommerce with statistical researchers who are producing new models and methods for large-scale data computations. The goal of this symposium is to contribute to the modernization and enhancement of empirical research methods for eCommerce and the digital society at large.