School of Mathematics, Statistics and Operations Research

Te Kura Mātai Tatauranga, Rangahau Pūnaha

The view from our building by Dean Pemberton CC Licensed

Kia ora, welcome to the School of Mathematics, Statistics and Operations Research, home of the oldest continuously studied academic disciplines in the University. Some of New Zealand's leading researchers in these fields are in our School and we attract large external research grants in both theoretical and applied aspects of mathematics, statistics and operations research. We have a modest but thriving graduate programme and all our courses both undergraduate and graduate are research informed.

Staff and students wishing to make use of the University Statistical Consultant should click here.

Latest News

Learning and Teaching Grant for Peter Donelan

12 Mar 2010 - 16:02 in Achievement

Congratulations to Dr Peter Donelan who is leading a team which has won one of the inaugural Learning and Teaching Grants for their project: ‘Maple TA: A testing and learning tool for mathematics’.

The proposal is for the School to pilot use of an online learning, testing and assessment tool, Maple TA (http://www.maplesoft.com/products/mapleta/index.aspx). This is produced by Maplesoft who are responsible for the computer algebra system Maple that is widely used around the world. It enables lecturers and course coordinators to develop question banks that provide practice and assessment (including self-assessment) opportunities for students.

Applied Statistics MSc student wins FoRST Maori Knowledge Fellowship

15 Feb 2010 - 17:11 in Achievement

OUr congratulations to Kylie Reiri, an applied statistics Masters student, who has been awarded a Te Tipu Putaiao (Maori Knowledge) Fellowship from FoRST. Kylie is one of four Victoria students, and one of only nine nationally, to win this award.

Under the supervision of Richard Arnold (SMSOR) and Adele Whyte (SBS), Kylie will conduct a statistical analysis of temporal and spatial variation in the Ngati Kahungunu fisheries catch. Her aim is to provide an improved view of the fisheries data currently collected in the Ngati Kahungunu rohe (boundaries), including reporting results at a finer geographical scale. Kylie will report back to Ngati Kahungunu stakeholders, iwi, scientific and industry groups, and to government.

International Biometrics Society Meeting 2009

15 Feb 2010 - 13:52 in Event

Four members of the Statistics and Operations Research Group (Ivy Liu, Richard Arnold, Nokuthaba Sibanda [pictured, catching prawns in the rain], and Shirley Pledger) recently attended the 2009 regional meeting of the International Biometrics Society (IBS), held in Taupo in December.

The conference programme covered a wide range of subjects in biostatistics - with Victoria researchers presenting work on Capture-Recapture, Bayesian infrerence in genetics and analysis of multiple response data in contingency tables. The conference particularly attracted researchers from NZ and Australia (some of whom had never seen rain before), as well as others from around the world.

New VUW Statistical Consultant Appointed

08 Jan 2010 - 15:02 in Staff

Dr. Dalice Sim has accepted the post of statistical consultant and will begin work on 1 March 2010. Her office will be Cotton 533.

She will be available to staff and graduate students of the university for statistical consultation on research topics.

See also the Statistical Consulting Webpage.

See more at the news archive.

Prospective graduate students

For information on graduate study in the School of Mathematics, Statistics and Operations Research please click here.

The University has information on how to apply for postgraduate programmes for Domestic Students and for International Students, and all prospective International students also should contact the University's International Office to avoid delays.

The University offers a limited number of scholarships at both Masters and PhD level. There are scholarships for both Domestic Students and International Students.

Please note -- some of the research topics listed below may have scholarships specifically attached. Contact the researcher concerned for more information.

Thesis topics and supervisors

The following members of staff are offering postgraduate supervision:
(this list is only partial at this stage, please see individual staff pages for research interests)

Mathematics
Dr Christopher Atkin - Infinite-dimensional geometry and its applications to analysis; groups of autohomeomorphisms of manifolds.
Dr Peter Donelan - Topics in singularities and invariants of robot manipulators, including applications of singularity theory, Riemannian geometry and computational invariant theory (Masters and PhD level)
Dr Noam Greenberg - Classical and higher computability theory (Masters, PhD) and Set theory (Masters level)
Dr Byoung Du Kim - Number theory with focus on arithmetic geometry (Masters)
Dr Hung Le Pham - Banach algebra theory (Masters)
Dr Dillon Mayhew - Matroid Theory (Masters and PhD level)
A/Prof Mark McGuinness - 1. The growth of sea ice - mathematical modelling of the growth of first year sea ice, with particular attention paid to the ice/ocean boundary, where turbulent flow and billows of frazil ice crystals complicate the picture. (A background in differential equations and numerical methods would be useful.) 2.Annealing steel coils - the radial transport of heat through layers of steel and hot gas is a limiting factor in factory furnaces, and a better mathematical understanding is needed. (A background in differential equations and numerical methods would be useful.)
Prof Geoff Whittle - Combinatorics, matroid theory (Masters or PhD level)

Statistics
Dr Richard Arnold - Capture Recapure analysis (with Dr Shirley Pledger); Bayesian statistics with applications to medicine and physics
Dr Yuichi Hirose - Missing data in semi-parametric models, Counting Process approach to time-to-event data (Masters and PhD level)
Prof Estate Khmaladze - A PhD Scholarship is available for work on newly discovered connections between set-valued analysis and statistics. See the description on http://www.fis.org.nz/BreakOut/vuw/schols.phtml?detail+500387
Prof Estate Khmaladze - 1. Statistical analysis of diversity. Theory of large number of rare events; 2. Application of geometry in statistical problems. Set-valued functions and statistics; 3. Goodness of fit theory. Testing statistical models; 4. Statistical analysis of tails of distributions. Extreme value theory and large deviations; 5. Stochastic processes in application to demography, finance and insurance; 6. Asymptotic statistical methods. Martingale methods in statistics; 7. Selected applications in biology, linguistics, finance.
Dr Ivy Liu - Ordinal Response Data Analysis
Dr Dong Wang - Multivariate analysis; Influence analysis for multivariate statistics; Diagnostic measures of censored regression; Operations research and applications in statistics.
Dr Nokuthaba Sibanda - Statistical genetics, Bayesian statistics (with applications in medicine and genetics), Statistical Process Control (with applications in healthcare and industry)

Operations Research
Dr Mark Johnston - Insight from visualization in combinatorial optimization (MSc); Integrating rewards with combinatorial optimization problems (MSc); Sports tournament scheduling and the travelling tournament problem (MSc); Sensitivity of numerical simplification in genetic programming (MSc); Addressing class imbalance in genetic programming for classification (MSc)