In What Ways Can I Help?

          Statistics

Our nation is moving from the information age to a knowledge-based economy. Statistics is the science of learning from data, and thus it is the principal tool in moving from data (information) to an understanding of the data (knowledge).

The Department of Statistics is at the forefront in providing students the skills they will need to function well in our new economy. Our curriculum has, or will soon have, innovative courses in forensic statistics, industrial statistics, bioinformatics, probabilistic networks, and data mining, to name a few. Bioinformatics forms the statistical and mathematical basis of genomics and provides a quantitative understanding of molecular biology. Probabilistic networks are widely used, for example, by amazon.com and others to learn about their customers, and data mining lets us explore and understand massive amounts of data collected over the Web or by corporations.

The Department of Statistics needs continued private support to provide the human and machine infrastructures to continue to expand our leading-edge curriculum which is preparing future students--majors as well as non-majors-- for our nation's new economy.

STATISTICS PRIORITIES

• Chair and Professorship Positions, especially to address new areas of our curriculum
• Graduate Student Support to fund better student stipends and to increase the number of graduate students working in the department
• Technology Support to provide funds to equip the department's teaching laboratories and to develop new courses
• Undergraduate Scholarships
• Funds to support the development of a departmental library, an advising center, and a student study area