Projects taken already (updated on 11/30/2018)
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  #  Name of the topic            Group                             Date to present 
 --  ----------------------       ---------------------------       ----------------
  1  Market correlations          Sam, Valerie,Ryan                         12/3
  2  VaR estimation using R       Mohit, Madhavi,Dhruv Mistry               12/3
  3  Fin Statement Analysis        Linh, Chandra, Aditya                     12/3
  4  Black Jack Simulation        Karthik,Lakshmi,Priya,Sumaita             12/3
  5  KMV default prob.            Ankita,Sarang,Nidhi,Sonal          11/26
  6  52-w high/low strategy       Trusha, Sindhu,Yogesh                     12/3
  7  Portfolio Analytics packages Nick, Alex                         11/26
  8  Max trading strategy         Saharsh,Alex,Morgan,Gina
  9  Bankruptcy prediction        Kapil,Will,Prateek,Yousuf,Edward           12/3
 10  SEC 10-K filings->BS         Bill,Mark                                  12/3
 11  Black-Litterman model        Owen, Yongjicai, Zhong                     12/3
 12  MonteCarlo for slot machine  Ruby,Supreet,Ashher                        12/3
 13  Illiquidity Measure,Amihud   Raaj, Jingwei,Hongjun                      12/3
 14  Retirement calculator        Qi,Juncen,Zhenglin                         12/3
 15  Spread from daily prices     Matt, Niveditha                            12/3

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grep() for a patter 
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We can use the grep() function to test the existence of a pattern
  > x<-"International"
  > grep("int",x)
    integer(0)

  > grep("Int",x)
     [1] 1

  > x2<-toupper(x)
  > x2
     [1] "INTERNATIONAL"
  > grep(toupper("int"),x2)
     [1] 1

 Generate an indicator 
   > a<-grep(toupper("int"),x2)
   > length(a)
      [1] 1
   > b<-grep(toupper("good"),x2)
   > length(b)
      [1] 0
 
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strtoi() function 
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 The strtoi() function converts a string to an integer
  > strtoi("2019")+1
    [1] 2020
 
   When the input is a string variable which contains a non-integer,
     the strtoi() function will not work. 

   > strtoi("2019")
    [1] 2019

   > strtoi("2019.5")
    [1] NA

  The as.integer() could be applied, shown below.   
     > strtoi(as.integer("2019.5"))
     [1] 2019

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