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Statistical procedures are called robust if they remain informative and efficient in the presence of outliers and other departures from typical model assumptions on the data. Ignoring unusual observations can play havoc with standard statistical methods and can also result in losing the valuable information gotten from unusual data points. Robust procedures prevent this. And these procedures are more important than ever since currently, data are often collected without following established experimental protocols. As a result, data may not represent a single well-defined population. Analyzing these data by non-robust methods may result in biased conclusions. To perform reliable and informative inference based on such a heterogeneous data set, we need statistical methods that can fit models and identify patterns, focusing on the dominant homogeneous subset of the data without being affected by structurally different small subgroups. Robust Statistics does exactly this. Some examples of applications are finding exceptional athletes (e.g. hockey players), detecting intrusion in computer networks and constructing reliable single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genotyping.
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News
Congratulations to this year’s two Rick White Award winners, Shuxian Fan and Austin Kwong.
Austin Kwong recently graduated with distinction in May 2020 with a B.Sc. in...
Beginning in September, the Canadian Statistical Sciences Institute (CANSSI) will be hosting a series of monthly virtual seminars, to be broadcast live on the...
This year’s recipients of the Dr. John and Barbara Petkau Scholarships are Xinpei Li and Huanqing (William) Wang.
Xinpei Li is entering third...
The Nash Medal in Statistics was awarded this year to Naitong Chen.
Naitong graduated with a major in Statistics in May 2020 with an exemplary transcript coupled with hands-...
The Department of Statistics offers several types of free statistical consultation, via STAT 551, SOS, and STAT 550, as follows.
- STAT 551: Term 1 only, open to anyone, via students in STAT 551 mentored by faculty; ...
Congratulations to our Statistics PhD student Joe Watson, who was awarded the Student Presentation Award at the virtual International Statistical Ecology Conference (ISEC) 2020!
ISEC...
Our professor and department head, Paul Gustafson, has received this year’s Statistical Society of Canada (SSC) Gold Medal.
The Gold Medal is the SSC’s most prestigious award for research. It is awarded to “a person who has made...
UBC Statistics PhD student Evan Sidrow won the Best Graduate Oral Presentation Award (Ph.D.) at the Eighth Annual Canadian Statistics Student Conference. This conference is usually held in-person just before the annual Statistical Society of...
Our department is thrilled to be welcoming five new faculty colleagues: Vincenzo Coia, Melissa Lee, Rodolfo Lourenzutti, Daniel McDonald, and Yongjin Park.
Rodolfo, Melissa, and Vincenzo will be taking up Assistant Professor of Teaching...
We’re very pleased to announce that our Statistics Senior Instructor, Eugenia Yu, has won a Killam Teaching Prize for excellence in...
We have all become familiar with the importance of monitoring the number of COVID-19 cases for setting policies and managing limited health care resources. But how do inaccuracies in tests for the virus impact the curves that describe the...
The Statistics Department is happy to announce that PhD student Sonja Isberg has been honoured in two ways for her contributions to statistics education.
Sonja is the recipient of the department’s...
We are pleased to announce that the winner of the 2019 Marshall Prize is PhD student Joe Watson.
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We are pleased to announce that David Kepplinger has won the Department’s 2019–20 Data Science Award.
David is finishing his PhD degree in Statistics under the...
Congratulations to our Professor Nancy Heckman on her role as the Associate Scientific Director of the Canadian Statistical Sciences Institute...
Professor James V. Zidek has been honoured by his appointment as an Officer of the Order of Canada, an appointment granted to those Canadians who make extraordinary contributions to the Nation. The honour recognizes Dr. Zidek's leadership and...