(For information about statistics programs and courses, see below.)
The statistics research group currently consists of:
The Department has a cooperative agreement with the Division of Biostatistics of the Medical College of Wisconsin . Students at either institution may enroll in courses at the other, and faculty at each institution hold adjunct positions at the other and may direct dissertations for students from the other institution. (Two of the MCW faculty , Hoffmann and Klein, are alumni of our graduate program.)
Within the Department, statisticians play an important role in the Center for Industrial Mathematics, and there is opportunity for collaboration with the Department's Atmospheric Science group as well. Each year, on a rotating basis, a member of the statistics group acts as Statistics Consultant for the UWM community, in lieu of teaching one course (usually in the spring semester). Consulting problems run the gamut from Architecture to Zoology and provide a further avenue for collaborative research.
Statistics is also part of many other programs at UWM, in particular the Production and Operations Management/Quantitative Methods group in the School of Business Administration , the Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering in the College of Engineering and Applied Science, the Department of Educational Psychology in the School of Education, and the Institute for Survey Policy and Research. In the Department of History, Prof. Margo Anderson has collaborated with Stephen Fienberg of Carnegie-Mellon on studies of the U.S. Census.
The Department allows math majors to specialize in five options, two of which involve statistics directly: statistics (of course) and actuarial science. The Department has begun the process of turning the actuarial science option into a separate major. The UWM Undergraduate Catalog has general information about the major in mathematics, including the statistics and actuarial science options.
At the graduate level, there is at present no separate degree in statistics. Master's and Ph.D. students choose courses to emphasize statistics (this is a formal option at the Ph.D. level) and write theses or projects in statistics. Graduate students in Industrial Mathematics often choose a statistical topic for their projects, or do internships that emphasize statistics.
Undergraduate majors in choosing the statistics or actuarial science option must complete Math Stat 361-362, a year-long post-calculus Introduction to Probability and Statistics. This is the main prerequisite for four courses in applied statistics (Math Stat 562-565) taught in a 2-year rotation: Design of Experiments, Regression, Time Series Analysis and Nonparametric Statistics. Courses such as Multivariate Analysis (Math Stat 568) are occasionally taught as well. Undergraduates interested in statistics often take Math Stat 461/462, a one-semester sequence (two 8-week modules) in Data Analysis and Graphing Using SAS and Probability Models (Math 571). Except for 461/462, these all carry graduate credit and are often taken by graduate students.
The Department offers three service courses in statistics as well: Math Stat 215 (non-calculus), 465 (for students in secondary education and the social sciences), and 467 (for students in engineering and the physical sciences), the latter two requiring some calculus. Math Stat 467 is cross-listed with Industrial Engineering 467, and at present is usually taught by the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering. Statistics and probability are an important component of Math 106, Contemporary Applications of Mathematics.
The basic graduate course in statistics is Math Stat 761-762, carrying a prerequisite of advanced calculus. Other statistics courses at the graduate level include Decision Theory (Math Stat 861), Hypothesis Testing (863), and other advanced topics. A course in measure-theoretic probability (Math 771, Theory of Probability) is offered every spring. Faculty also offer seminars (Math 799) in probability and statistics
The UWM Course Bulletin pages relating to Mathematics (including Probability) and Statistics is available on-line here.