Posts tagged Student work (14)

Every summer, the Department of Statistics offers scholarships to a number of students so they can work with staff on real-world projects. Eva, right, is working on a sociolinguistic study with Dr Steffen Klaere. Eva, right,  explains:

“How often do you recognise the dialect of a neighbour and start classifying them into a certain category? Sociolinguistics studies patterns and structures in spoken language to identify some of the traits that enable us to do this kind of classification.

“Linguists have known for a long time that this involves recognising relevant signals in speech, and using those signals to differentiate some speakers and group others. Specific theories of language predict that some signals will cluster together, but there are remarkably few studies that seriously explore the patterns that might emerge across a number of signals.

“The study I am working on was carried out on Bequia Island in the Eastern Caribbean. The residents of three villages, Mount Pleasant, Paget Farm and Hamilton, say that they can identify which village people come from by their spoken language. The aim of this study was to detect signals in speech that tied the speaker to a location.

“One major result from this project was that the data are sometimes insufficient to answer the researchers’ questions satisfactorily. So we are tapping into the theory of experimental design to develop sampling protocols for sociolinguistic studies that permit researchers to answer their questions satisfactorily.

“I am 22 and come from Xanten in Germany. I studied Biomathematics at the Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-University in Greifswald, and have just finished my bachelor degree.

“What I like most about statistics is its connection with mathematical theory and its application to many different areas. You can work with people who aren’t necessarily statisticians.

“This is my first time in New Zealand, so with my time off I am looking forward to travelling around the country. During my holidays I will explore Northland and the Bay of Islands. After I have finished my project, I want to travel from Auckland to the far south and back again.”

Every year, the Department of Statistics offers summer scholarships to a number of students so they can work with staff on real-world projects. Alexander, right, is undertaking a statistics education research project with Dr Marie Fitch and Dr Stephanie Budgett. Alexander explains:

“Essentially, what this project involves is looking at how bootstrapping and re-randomisation being added into the university’s introductory statistics course have affected students’ understanding of statistical inference, such as interpreting P-values and confidence intervals, and knowing what can and can’t be justifiably claimed based on those statistical results.

“This mainly consists of classifying test and exam questions into several key categories from before and after bootstrapping and re-randomisation were added to the course, and looking at the change (if any) in the number of students who correctly answer these questions over time, and even if any common misconceptions become more or less prominent in students’ answers as well.

“This sort of project is useful as traditionally, introductory statistics education has had a large focus on the normal distribution and using it to develop ideas and understanding of statistical inference from it. This results in a theoretical and mathematical approach, which means students will often be restricted by the complexity of it and will therefore struggle to be able to use it to make clear inference about the data.

“Bootstrapping and re-randomisation are two techniques that can be used in statistical analysis and were added into the introductory statistics course at the university in 2012. They have been around for some time, but have only become prominent and practically useful recently as they require many repetitions of simulations, which obviously is better-suited to a computer rather than a person. Research on this emphasises how using these techniques allow key statistical ideas to be taught and understood without a lot of fuss, such as complicated assumptions and dealing with probability distributions.

“In 2015, I’ll be completing my third year of a BSc in Statistics and Operations Research, and I’ll be looking at doing postgraduate study after that. I’m not sure why statistics appeals to me, I just found it very interesting and enjoyable at university and wanted to do more of it. I always liked maths at school, so it probably stemmed from that.

“I don’t have any plans to go away anywhere so this summer I’ll just relax, enjoy some time off in the sun and spend time around home. I might also focus on some drumming practice, as well as playing with my two dogs.”

This summer, we have a number of fantastic students who received a Department of Statistics scholarship to work on fascinating projects with our staff members. We’ll be profiling them here on Stats Chat and we’d love to hear your feedback on their projects!

Savannah is working with Maxine Pfannkuch and Stephanie Budgett on a research project entitled ‘Statistics Education Research – the bootstrap method’.

Savannah explains:

“I’m working on a collaborative research project looking at statistics education in New Zealand at the secondary and tertiary level. This summer the research team has been expanded to include two research assistants, myself and Kim Eccles (who is also featured on this website). I’m very grateful for the opportunity to work in such an amazing environment and am looking forward to acquiring new skills in research and data analysis over the summer.

“Overall, the project focuses on exploring the ways in which statistics students respond to the concepts taught. We are especially interested in their understanding of two new computer-intensive methods for learning about statistical inference. Over the summer, we will be analysing data obtained from pre- and post-testing as well as interviews, using the computer software package nVivo. From this, we hope to gain some kind of insight into the statistical understanding students develop as a result of the teaching they receive. In particular, we would like to identify which of the “big ideas” are well understood by students and which common misconceptions exist, so that we can improve teaching for future generations of budding statisticians.”

More about Savannah:

“I was originally interested in this project because of my own background in statistics. At school, I developed an early (misguided!) disgust for statistics and would never have taken the subject any further, had Stage 1 statistics not been a compulsory course for my degree. Having since discovered a completely unexpected passion for the subject, I’m excited to be part of a project which I hope will make statistics more accessible and enjoyable for a much wider range of students.

“I have just completed my second year of a conjoint BSc/LLB degree. Aside from my statistics major, I am also completing a second major in chemistry for the BSc component of my degree. I really enjoy the investigative, problem-solving aspect of science and would like to go on to Honours in statistics after I’ve finished my time as an undergraduate. After that, the way forward is a little less clear, but I’m 100% sure that whichever career I end up in, a background in statistics will help me to make more sense of the world around me.

“Outside university, I especially love to sing and am involved with a number of different choirs. I spend one night a week playing social indoor netball, which is a lot of fun – bouncing balls off the walls and down the court takes some time to get used to but makes the game much more interesting! I’m also a member of the Pupuke Rotaract club, which focuses on community service around Auckland. It’s also a great place to socialise with other like-minded people.

“Over the summer, I’m looking forward to doing lots of relaxing: reading, swimming, watching late-night movies, sleeping in and spending lots of time at the beach with family and friends.”

This summer, we have a number of fantastic students who received a Department of Statistics scholarship to work on fascinating projects with our staff members. We’ll be profiling them here on Stats Chat and we’d love to hear your feedback on their projects!

Ryan is working with Brendon Brewer on a research project entitled ‘Uncertainty in faint astronomical images’.

Ryan explains:

“Astronomers often take images of the sky, then look for objects such as stars or galaxies in these images. It is of interest to measure the “flux” or total brightness of the objects, which is then used as input to scientific studies. However, this cannot be done accurately because the images are noisy, especially when they are of very faint distant objects such as the first galaxies in the universe.

“Two approaches for estimating flux are in common use. One is to simply add the image pixel values together and use that to estimate the total flux. A more sophisticated approach is to try to infer the underlying noise-free image of the object (using Bayesian methods), and then to calculate the flux of the noise-free image. This second approach is harder and requires more assumptions, but is likely to be more accurate.

“Our project is using simulations to investigate exactly how much more accurate the sophisticated approach is, and whether this remains true even when incorrect assumptions are used.”

More about Ryan:

“I have just finished a Bachelor of Science degree in Statistics and Maths. Next year I will be starting a Bachelor of Science (Honours) in Statistics. Having done statistics and maths has significantly improved my thinking and problem-solving abilities, which has been useful for projects like the one I’m currently involved in and (hopefully) are very desirable traits to have in the workforce.

“I like stats because it can be useful in almost any industry. Almost anything we do produces some data which will then need to be analysed. I have found stats to be the most enjoyable subject I have studied due to the great lecturers and the material having a lot of relevance to real-life problems.

“In my spare time this summer I’ll be spending some time in Christchurch with the family, seeing friends, probably doing a lot of relaxing and playing computer games!”

This summer, we have a number of fantastic students who received a Department of Statistics scholarship to work on fascinating projects with our staff members. We’ll be profiling them here on Stats Chat and we’d love to hear your feedback on their projects!

Shuran is working with Ilze Ziedins, Alan Lee and Geoffrey Pritchard on a research project entitled ‘Statistical assessment of telecommunications network performance metrics.’

Shuran explains:

“My summer research with Harmonic is more like an internship.

Harmonic provides smart solutions using advanced analytics tool R to energy sectors, telecommunications and also agriculture industries.

One of the projects I am involved in is about analysis of social networks to deliver customer insight. I will also be working on checking as well as editing the R training manual by adding some finance related cases.

More about Shuran:

“My primary major is Quantitative Finance. I’m also doing a second major in Statistics. Statistics is a really useful tool that is widely applied in various industries like actuarial science, finance, and telecommunications. The beauty is that it can explore and extract information from piles of numbers.”

This summer, we have a number of fantastic students who received a Department of Statistics scholarship to work on fascinating projects with our staff members. We’ll be profiling them here on Stats Chat and we’d love to hear your feedback on their projects!

Viet is working with Thomas Yee on a research project entitled ‘Parameter estimation for selected univariate distributions.’

Viet explains:

“I’m working on various theoretical aspects (investigation of different types of distribution, implementation of new mathematical-based theories) and practical sides (data cleaning, issues in LaTeX and Sweave).

“I am digging into the some distribution theory and related properties (half-normal, truncated geometric, nearest neighbour and so on) in order to expand and diversify our current number of well-known distributions (normal, Poisson) …

“I’m also doing some practical work such as using various approaches to clean large data sets (e.g. removing outliers).

“Checking the functionality of VGLM and VGAM packages is also included in my summer research.”

More about Viet:

“I graduated from the Department of Mathematics majoring in Pure Mathematics along with two minors in Applied Mathematics and Statistics. Statistics has always been a significant interest simply because of its beautiful connection to multiple areas in life such as finance, economics, computer science and many more. Understanding statistics is also very helpful in daily life.

“I’m looking forward to going camping with friends over the Christmas/New Year period.”

This summer, we have a number of fantastic students who received a Department of Statistics scholarship to work on fascinating projects with our staff members. We’ll be profiling them here on Stats Chat and we’d love to hear your feedback on their projects!

Daisy is working with Steffen Klaere on a research project entitled ‘What drives a phylogenetic inference?’

Daisy explains:   

“Phylogenetic inference aims at deriving the most likely ancestry of a set of species, as well as information relating to evolutionary speed and potential related events. It is an important process in which we wish to classify the history of an organism, but we don’t know that history. Thus, we must infer the evolutionary transformations that have taken place, to provide the best estimate of the true phylogeny.

“However, there is one unresolved question in this field – how do we measure the goodness of fit between an inferred model and the actual data we have been provided with? This question remains as a significant area of uncertainty within the major world of phylogenetic inference.

“Thus, the project aims at developing methods that identify data points as outliers. This will allow us to further develop our understanding of whether a suggested ancestry is actually an ideal candidate for a specific organism’s genetic data.”

More about Daisy:

“I am very grateful to have been given this project over summer, and am extremely excited to enter into a different learning environment other than undergraduate study.  Having completed my Bachelor of Science majoring in Mathematics and Statistics, I am returning in 2013 for an Honours programme.  Ever since high school, I have always been fascinated by the logic and nature of these subjects, which naturally led me to studying them at university.  As I ventured through my degree, I further developed my enthusiasm for statistics and increased my awareness of its significance not only within practical situations, but also within everyday real-life situations.

“Outside of my project, I am excited to be reunited with my brother visiting from England, who I have not seen for almost four years!  Hopefully I will be exploring more of New Zealand’s beautiful scenery, and shall be attempting to tan my consistently stubborn, pale English skin.”

This summer, we have a number of fantastic students who received a Department of Statistics scholarship to work on fascinating projects with our staff members. We’ll be profiling them here on Stats Chat and we’d love to hear your feedback on their projects!

Nur Azizah Komara Rifai is working with Yannan Jiang on a research project entitled ‘Trends in typical food portion sizes consumed by New Zealand adults.’

Azizah explains:   

“There is an urgent public health need to reduce obesity. Research from other countries indicates food portion sizes have been increasing parallel with rates of obesity, and are an important contributory factor. But no information currently exists on how New Zealand adults’ food portion sizes are changing over time.

“Data from the National Nutrition Survey in 1997 and 2008/09 will be cleaned, categorised and then analysed using R. I’m interested in using statistics to determine trends in food portion sizes over time and then disseminating those findings to the public.”

More about Azizah:

“I’m from Indonesia. I am studying statistics at Padjadjaran University in Bandung,  the capital of West Java province in Indonesia, and will be travelling to New Zealand to take up the scholarship.

“I experienced a critical period in my life when I was accepted into both my dream course in statistics at Padjadjaran University (despite the prohibitive cost) and the  Chemical Analysts Academy in Bogor (at much cheaper cost). I had to choose between the two, but the decision was made much tougher because my family was hit by the financial crisis.

“I did not want to be selfish with my personal desires, but I also did not want to underestimate my future. It was a very difficult struggle to persuade my parents that I should choose statistics and that it had excellent employment prospects. We prayed for a miracle to pay for the course and finally we solved it.  While I’m unable to pay or replace the struggles my parents went through to get me there, I was able to give them the gift of scoring a perfect 4.00 GPA.”

“I like traditional food like lalap and sambal, watching television, playing the keyboard, drawing, hanging out with my friends, sport (futsal, jogging, badminton, swimming, gymnastics), and reading textbooks.”

This summer, we have a number of fantastic students who received a Department of Statistics scholarship to work on fascinating projects with our staff members. We’ll be profiling them here on Stats Chat and we’d love to hear your feedback on their projects.

Richard Hopkins is working with Paul Murrell on a research project entitled ‘Voronoi treemaps in R’.

Richard explains:

“A Voronoi treemap is a graphical, non-rectangular representation of hierarchical data. Voronoi Treemaps are often used to represent population data (subdivisions within the Voronoi treemap represent elements of the population and their respective weights). There are currently algorithms in place that allow a user to generate Voronoi treemaps; however, the algorithms are slow and unstable.

“The purpose of my project is to find ways to multi-thread or parallelise the code so that it can run faster. I will attempt to achieve this by doing the following:

• Cleaning up and packaging the existing source code;
• Modifying the code to allow for control of different start points for each sub-region;
• Fine-tuning the NZ price Kaleidoscope example so that it accurately represents data and is aesthetically pleasing;
• Running the code on high-performance machines to speed things up.

“I will also explore parameters of the algorithm to investigate current stability issues and any others that may arise during the course of the project.”

More about Richard:

“I was born and raised in Auckland. I am of New Zealand and Samoan heritage and I take pride in both sides. Last week, my wife and I celebrated two years of marriage. Although we don’t have children, we have a ton of immediate and extended family members to whom we devote lots of time. We are also heavily involved in our church. I enjoy a wide range of sports, especially basketball, power-lifting and grid iron.

“I recently completed a Bachelor of Science majoring in statistics and computer science. I have also been admitted to the 2013 Honours programme for statistics. I enjoy studying statistics because from a young age I have had an interest in recognising and analysing patterns and trends. I believe that studying statistics will enable me to turn my curiosity about numbers into useful skills, such as forecasting and data mining, that will hopefully benefit individuals, families and communities.”

This summer, we have a number of fantastic students who received a Department of Statistics scholarship to work on fascinating projects with our staff members. We’ll be profiling them here on Stats Chat and we’d love to hear your feedback on their projects!

Glenn Thomas is working with Alan Lee, Ilze Ziedins and Geoff Pritchard on a research project entitled ‘Statistical modelling of telecommunications sector challenges.’

Glenn explains:

“My project is unique as it is not a traditional project. Instead, I’m doing an internship at Harmonic, a company that provides custom business analytics and software tools to businesses, partnering with various universities including The University of Auckland. Harmonic provides solutions to companies primarily in the telecommunications, energy, and agriculture industries. In particular, I am working on projects in the telecommunications industry and I am also exploring how to deal with big data in R.

“One of the projects I have been working on is an asset life-cycle solution for Telecom New Zealand. The PTSN (Public Switched Telephone Network) is a fundamental asset for Telecom, and Harmonic’s asset-management analytics ensures it runs efficiently by providing monthly information updates to support spares management, failure analysis, disaster recovery and life-cycle planning. My role has been to improve the speed of some of the processes used in the analysis by optimising existing R code and developing custom functions.

“Another project I have been working on in the same industry is SNA (social network analysis), which is the analysis of social networks to deliver customer insight. One of the challenges I am facing is dealing with the large amount of data. Harmonic uses R to deliver statistical solutions, but one of the difficulties in R is working with very large datasets. I’ve been looking into various packages and methods of handling big data in R, and applying it to social network analysis.”

More about Glenn:

“I’ve just completed my third year of a conjoint degree in commerce and science. I know it sounds like an odd combination at first, but I have found the subjects to be quite complementary. My commerce major is finance, and my science majors are statistics and applied mathematics. I chose these subjects initially since I was good at them and enjoyed them at school. But more recently, I have particularly enjoyed the problem-solving side of statistics. That’s what I love about statistics; everything you learn is applicable to solving real-world problems.

“Outside of study, I enjoy getting outdoors and doing some hiking and camping. I recently walked the Hillary Trail, a 70km hike in the WaitakereRanges. I also enjoy water-skiing during the summer. I enjoy investigating the latest technology and, of course, spending time with my family and friends.”