Meet Hongbin Guo, Statistics summer scholar

Every year, the Department of Statistics at the University of Auckland offers summer scholarships to a number of students so they can work with our staff on real-world projects.  Hongbin Guo (below) is working with Dr. Stephane Guindon on a project called Incorporating spatial information into the coalescent. Hongbin explains:

“We all share a common ancestor. The age of that ancestor strongly depends on the size of the population under scrutiny. For instance, two individuals randomly chosen in New Zealand (a large population) will generally have an older common ancestor compared to two randomly-chosen individuals from the same family (a small population). Kingman’s coalescent translates this idea into a simple yet powerful statistical tool that has been used to infer the size of populations given the genealogies of groups of individuals.

“However, this approach does not account for spatial information – the location of individuals is simply ignored. Since closely-related individuals also tend to live next to each other, incorporating spatial information into the coalescent appear like a relevant extension of this model. This project aims at making a first step in this direction.

“I am an international student from China, and this is my fourth year at the University of Auckland. I have a BCom\BSc in Economics, Statistics and Mathematics; this year I am doing Honours.

“Statistics appeals to me because our society is built on information, and statistics is the study of finding logic and useful information in messy piles of data. It is the study of bringing beauty out of chaos. Statistics is extremely useful in all fields of science.

“This summer, when I am not working on my project, I want to take a trip to the South Island and see beautiful New Zealand. In the past four years, thanks to my workload, I haven’t got out of Auckland. I am really grateful for this scholarship – hard work pays off, indeed!”