Program Overview

This course is designed to prepare you for a career as a statistics researcher, where you can help solve problems in areas ranging from banking and finance to healthcare and medicine. You’ll be trained to use the tools and software professional statisticians use and complete a major research project in your final year.

We have a small but focused number of modules in the first year, that cover all the essentials you’ll need for the rest of your degree. You will start to develop programming skills using Python and R, which can be applied to lots of jobs that involve data. You’ll learn to use the typesetting software LaTeX, which mathematicians and statisticians use to present their work.

In your second year, you’ll continue to build a powerful toolbox of mathematical techniques. You’ll also learn how to apply your statistics knowledge to increasingly complex problems through statistical modelling and computer simulations. There are optional modules on topics including algebra, mechanics and fluids.

Some modules include more project work. This gives you the chance to put your mathematics skills into practice in different contexts and scenarios that you might encounter when you start work after graduation. A module on careers development gives you the chance to find out about different career paths, learn about potential employers, write an impressive CV and sell yourself at job interviews.

By the third year, you’ll have the skills, knowledge and experience to go in lots of different directions. There is training in how to design experiments and collect data, how statistics are used in clinical trials of new drugs and how data can predict the likely outcome of an event. We’ll give you lots of optional modules to choose from, so you can study the topics that are most useful to the career path you want to take or that you enjoy the most.

You’ll have a similar range of options to choose from in your final year. You’ll also spend a third of your time working on your own research project. You’ll choose a topic in an area of mathematics that interests you, and work closely with one of our staff who is an expert in the field. You’ll write up your findings and give a presentation about what you’ve learned.