PHD STUDENTSHIP IN STATISTICS AT THE OPEN UNIVERSITY
Applications are invited for a full-time PhD studentship in
Statistics commencing 1 October, 2011. The studentship will
include University fees and a grant to cover living expenses.
The studentship will be based at the Open University's central
campus in Milton Keynes, where there is a thriving postgraduate
student community. The Statistics Group at the Open University
provides a lively and stimulating environment for Statistics
research with active researchers working in a variety of fields
of statistics. For more information about the Statistics Group
see http://statistics.open.ac.uk/.
Two possible Statistics projects are available:
Title: Measuring Performance in Orienteering
Supervisor: Dr Karen Vines
Title: Comparing Recently Proposed Families of Distributions
Supervisor: Prof Chris Jones
Full details of each project can be found below.
Applicants should have a first or upper second class honours
degree and, preferably, a recognized postgraduate qualification
containing a substantial element of Statistics. Applications from
all nationalities are welcome.
Informal enquiries may be made to Catriona Queen (email:
[log in to unmask]).
APPLICATION PROCESS
The Open University's Research Degrees Prospectus and application
form, can be found at
http://www.open.ac.uk/research/research-degrees/.
When applying for the studentship please include:
a) a completed application form (note that where the standard
application form asks for a research proposal, simply indicate
which (one or more) of the advertised projects you are interested
in),
and
b) a covering letter explaining why you want to do a PhD and why
you are interested in one or other (or both) projects.
CLOSING DATE FOR APPLICATIONS: Friday, 18 February, 2011.
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PROJECT DETAILS
Project: Measuring Performance in Orienteering Supervisor: Dr
Karen Vines
Orienteering is a running sport in which competitors are expected
to navigate their way to a series of locations ('controls') as
quickly as possible (see for example
www.britishorienteering.org.uk). Judging and comparing the
performance of orienteers is not straightforward for a number of
reasons, including the following.
* Times at different competitions ('events') are not directly
comparable as the courses set inevitably vary. Thus what might
be regarded as a very good time at one event could easily
correspond to a poor result at another nominally equivalent
event.
* A poor performance might be the result of a slow running
speed or the occasional serious navigational error or something
in-between. These causes have different implications when it
comes to training. A slow running speed suggests that the
orienteer needs to spend more time developing their physical
fitness. In contrast orienteers who have a propensity towards
making serious navigation errors needs to concentrate on
developing their orienteering technique.
* Some events aim to find the orienteer that most exceeded what
was expected of them - with this expectation typically based on
their age and gender. It is a difficult balancing act for any
handicapping system to achieve fairness over the large range of
ages that orienteering attracts.
The aim of this project is to examine existing methods for
judging and comparing the performance of orienteers from a
statistical point of view. Also, using techniques such as
non-linear regression, robust estimation and outlier
identification to develop new, justified, methodology that will
be of help to orienteers. To this end, the intention is to make
use of the wealth of orienteering results data that is publicly
available, data which are rich and complex.
Although the project will be geared to tackling performance
measurement issues specifically in orienteering, it is
anticipated that the methodology will have wider applicability,
both in other sports and more generally. For example the
methodology might provide a new way of comparing runners who take
part in road races, or in the measuring performance of race
horses. Equally methodology produced for fair handicapping could
play a role in fitness and health monitoring where there is a
need to adjust performance for age and gender. The methodology
might also improve the formulation of performance league tables
such as those used to compare the performance of schools or
hospitals by improving the adjustment procedure for known
confounders such as the initial abilities of pupils or the mix of
patient types. Successful completion of this project could
therefore have benefits far beyond the narrow confines of
orienteering.
Project: Comparing Recently Proposed Families of Distributions
Supervisor: Prof Chris Jones
The supervisor of this project is someone who is at the forefront
of developing and understanding new three- and four-parameter
families of continuous distributions with a variety of skewness/
tailweight properties for use in statistics. These distributions
are of practical importance because they provide a parametric
modelling alternative to robust statistics as usually practised;
they also form components of many more complex models. The
current project will emphasise comparative issues: what are the
pros and cons of the main families of distributions as currently
proposed? Comparison of theoretical properties will form the
starting point, going on to further comparative topics which
might include consideration of issues of inference and of
multivariate extension.
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