Maya Ruder
About Me
I am a recent graduate from the University of Michigan with a Bachelor of Science in Statistics and a minor in Global Media Studies. I turn data into stories. I write about film.
I have always been drawn to storytellers: filmmakers, writers, artists. This led me to The Michigan Daily, where I spent four years reporting on film and culture. That same impulse led me to statistics, a discipline which taught me that storytelling is at the heart of numbers and data.
Whether I’m interviewing a filmmaker from behind a notepad or modeling a distribution from behind a computer, I am pursuing the same goal: finding the story. I am searching for work where both instincts matter.
Undergraduate Work
I spent much of my time as an undergraduate Statistics student learning methods for statistical experimentation and applying them to real-world issues. Upper-level courses challenged me to own each stage of the analysis, including gathering, cleaning, and reshaping raw data. I chose models to fit the question, comparing frequentist and Bayesian approaches, penalized and unpenalized fits, and parametric methods through resampling. I tested the assumptions of each method, often through convergence checks, cross-validation, and holdout samples, and implemented simulation to observe how methods behave once their assumptions break. Across text analysis, sports, public health, and transportation, each project starts with a question, implements modeling and simulation to answer it, and ends with an honest interpretation of what the data can and can’t say.
Check out some of my academic papers:
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Built a text pipeline through tokenization, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency, word vectorization, and feature selection. Compared Naive Bayes, K-Nearest Neighbors, Support Vector Machines, tree-based models, hybrids, and neural networks on Albanian news articles to answer this question:
Which machine learning models best separate real from fake news, and is greater complexity worth the cost?
Tools: Python, TF-IDF, TensorFlow
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Using World Happiness Report data from 165 countries across 18 years, imputed missing values and fit linear and Bayesian regression in Stan, checking convergence plots and effective sample sizes to answer this question:
Which socio-economic factors most influence life satisfaction across countries?
Tools: R, Stan, MCMC diagnostics
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Combined bootstrap confidence intervals, Monte Carlo shock simulations, and permutation tests on 10 years of U.S. Bureau of Transportation data, validating each method's coverage, Type I error, and bias to answer this question:
How do severe disruptions change the entire shape of the arrival-delay distribution, not just the average?
Tools: R, bootstrap, Monte Carlo simulation, permutation testing
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Using published national health data through August 2021, computed severe-disease rates by age group, built Agresti-Coull confidence intervals, and applied direct age standardization to answer this question:
How well do mRNA vaccines protect against severe disease in a real population, and how much does the method of analysis matter?
Tools: R, binomial confidence intervals, direct standardization
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Compared a plain Bradley-Terry model, a Bayesian penalized logistic regression, and a version with home-court and date effects. Tested matchups with Bonferroni-corrected z-tests to answer the question:
Can win-loss records alone produce a trustworthy team ranking, and can we say one team is significantly stronger than another?
Tools: R, bayesglm, logistic regression, multiple-testing correction
Paramount Pictures Internship
I landed my dream internship as a rising senior in college. From June to October 2025, I worked within the Sales department of Paramount Home Entertainment (HE) as a Digital Account Planning Intern. I worked on the studio’s largest HE account, which represented a roughly $300M segment of the business at the time. My project sat at the intersection of entertainment, audience behavior, and digital ad strategy. I analyzed the performance of past film releases and various promotional campaigns, working closely with Sales, Marketing, and Finance to build a strong working knowledge of the business in order to translate the complex audience, revenue, and marketing datasets into clear findings.
I built an automated reporting system that pulled together previously siloed information, cutting reporting time and enabling real-time analysis of daily trends. I also developed a working ROI model for the evaluation of investment efficiency, which I independently delivered and presented to the Executive Sales, Marketing, and Finance teams. Both tools were designed to outlast my time there, and my supervisors noted that the model would continue to be used and expanded on by the team. This was my first experience transforming an open-ended brief into a working tool relied upon by real stakeholders, used to implement real change.
Not only was it an incredible learning experience as a young professional, but it was an enlightening opportunity to understand how my quantitative background not only enforces, but relies upon my passion for the creative.
Student Journalism
Sundance Film Festival
I attended the Sundance Film Festival in 2023, 2024, and 2026 as a press correspondent. I had the pleasure of attending panels, press lines, and premieres, where I was able to speak with industry professionals and talent. We celebrated the legacy of festival founder Robert Redford and the festival’s last year of residency in Park City, Utah this past winter.
Check out some of my Sundance pieces:
In 2023, I attended the 59th Chicago International Film Festival as the sole press correspondent and representative of the Michigan Daily. Here, I had the wonderful opportunity to meet filmmaker Lucy Kerr, brush elbows with actor David Dastmalchian, and share in the Windy City’s rich history of independent cinema.
Check out some of my coverage:
Chicago International Film Festival
The Michigan Daily
I spent the entirety of my undergraduate college career writing for the Michigan Daily, one of the largest student-run newspapers in the country, as an Arts Writer on the Film Beat. When I wasn’t reporting from film festivals, I was reviewing new releases, writing retrospectives, and indulging in awards season.
Check out some of my pieces from over the years:
