Meet Lushi Cai, Statistics summer scholar

Every summer, the Department of Statistics offers scholarships to high-achieving students so they can work with staff on real-world projects. Lushi Cai is working with Professor Chris Wild on iNZight, a free data visualisation and analysis software he developed.

There’s a Chinese saying that goes “Travel ten thousand miles, read ten thousand books.” And that’s just what summer scholar Lushi Cai, in the picture, is doing.

Originally from Guangzhou in southern China, Lushi had done a year of undergraduate study in China before she moved with her family to New Zealand three years ago. She embarked on a Bachelor of Science majoring in computer science and statistics at the University of Auckland, finishing her degree last year. This year, Lushi will be on an honours programme.

As a summer scholar, Lushi is working on the Department of Statistics’ data analysis package, iNZight. This is a free, R-based environment started by statistics education expert Professor Chris Wild to help high-school students quickly and easily explore data and understand some statistical ideas. However, iNZight has grown, and now extends to multivariable graphics, time series, and generalised linear modelling, including modelling of data from complex surveys. It is available in web and desktop versions.

Lushi’s summer scholarship involves implementing interactive web graphs for R- generated statistics plots and enhancing the web version of iNZight by adding an interactive plot function.  “Users tell iNZight what to do and what analysis output they want using iNZight’s gui (graphical user interface),” she explains. “They don’t need to know how to write code.

“However, key modules also provide users with the R code that iNZight used to produce their output. This is great for learning how to do things in R, and it also makes iNZight analyses reproducible by others.”

But improvements are needed, she adds: “Unfortunately, the R code automatically generated by iNZight is not easy for humans to read. So I’m writing an auto-formatter that converts messy R code into tidy R code that’s easy to read.”

Students are a critical part of the development of iNZight, says Chris Wild. “It’s a student-driven project, so most of the big-scale changes occur over the New Zealand summer period. At other times, we mostly work on small changes and bug fixes.”

Lushi enjoys problem-solving, so this sort of project is a natural fit. In addition, “my interest is analysing huge data and producing a direct way, such as tables and graphs, to explore the features. I believe this is a powerful skill and can be applied to every field in the real world”.

• For general information on University of Auckland summer scholarships, click here.