Applications and Enrollment
- How do I pre-apply? And why?
- For students who are interested in our program but are not yet ready
to commit to applying, pre-applying is a good way to still keep in touch
with our Department. By pre-applying, your information will be forwarded
important representatives of the Department. Also, if you are interested
in the Ph.D. program and it is past the December 15 deadline, it is a great
way to get in touch with the Department. You can pre-apply online by clicking
here.
-
- How do I apply?
- The Department of Statistics asks that all applicants complete our application
online. Our application website is: http://www.stat.ucla.edu/program/application.php.
We strongly encourage all applicants to use the internet application, since
this online application gets processed faster, provides you with the most
current information, saves paper and produces more accurate results. Contact Dean
M. Dacumos, the Student Affairs Officer, if you have any questions
on the application process.
-
- When is the application deadline?
- If you are applying for the Ph.D. Program, we only accept applications
for the Fall Quarter and you need to have mailed off your entire application
by December 15 of the year prior to the year you are applying to.
If you are applying to the M.S. Program, we accept applications year round.
Depending on when we receive your application, we will review it for admission
to either the Fall, Winter or Spring Quarters.
-
-
- How many graduate students are there in your program?
- We currently have 34 graduate students in our program: 20 Ph.D. Students
and 14 M.S. students. You can see more detailed information on our students
if you click here.
Research and Research Groups
- Who are the UCLA Statistics research faculty?
- See Statistics research faculty.
-
- How is UCLA Statistics Research Organized?
- See Statistics research.
-
- What are Statistics Ambassadors?
- Statisticians necessarily have contacts with many different disciplines.
In order to formalize these contacts we have appointed "ambassadors" to
the various UCLA departments, centers, and programs that use statistics
in their research, teaching, and consulting. These ambassadors are
statistics faculty members, who will be involved in formal contacts between
the Department of Statistics and their designated client departments.
-
- What are UCLA Statistics computing facilities?
- The Instructional Computing Lab is
located in 9413 Boelter Hall.
Advice and Consulting
- How do I find a particular statistic?
- The UCLA Statistics Department has an active Consulting Center that can assist you with
your statistical problems or questions.
-
- How do I find a particular reference?
- If you logged in from a UCLA account you can use the CIS
database, which contains at least 20 years of published statistics
books and papers. You can look for links to journals at Probability and Statistics Journals on the WEB page
or use our Articles
Search Engines. If nothing else helps, you can use standard
web search engines such as Google or Yahoo.
-
- How do I get free advice about my statistical problem?
- A limited amount of free consulting is available through the UCLA Statistical
Consulting Center, contact Richard Berk. For on-campus walk-in, e-mail,
and telephone consulting we refer you to OAC Statistical Computing Consulting.
For more information, click here.
-
- How do I get professional assistance with my statistical
problem?
- The goal of the Statistical Consulting Center is to give students, under
faculty supervision, hands-on experience with data and statistical problems,
while providing support for clients on and off the UCLA campus. Under some
circumstances, faculty associated with the consulting center will take
on consulting jobs with little or no student involvement, especially if
the work needs to be done quickly. We provide technical assistance on a
wide variety of statistical procedures and matters of research design.
For more information, click here.
-
- How do I find a statistics tutor?
- Click here for students in our Department
willing to tutor.
-
- I was looking for statistics about UCLA, not the UCLA
Department of Statistics. Where should I look?
- Click here.
Degrees and Certificates
- How do I get an undergraduate minor in Statistics?
- To apply for the Undergraduate Minor, you must first complete either
an upper or lower division Statistics class with a C or better. You should
also take the Calculus sequence: Math 31A-33B. Then visit Dean M. Dacumos,
the Statistics Student Affairs Officer at 8142A Math Sciences Bldg. Dean
will advise you as to which courses will best fit your interests. To complete
the minor, you must take a minimum of 28 units in Statistics. For details
further details on the minor click
here.
-
- How do I get an undergraduate major in Statistics?
- The Department is currently working on getting an Undergraduate Major
in Statistics approved. If all goes to plan, the Major will be available
in 2002-2003 academic year. Please check back to this page for
updates.
-
- How do I get a graduate minor in Statistics?
- If you are interested in a graduate minor in Statistics, click
here.
-
-
- How do I get a graduate minor in Teaching of Statistics?
- Also, the Department is planning on adding a second graduate minor in "Teaching
of Statistics." Stay tuned either here or on our Department program site for information on that minor.
-
- How do I get an M.S. in Statistics?
- If you are interested in applying to our Master's program in Statistics, click
here. If you want information about the program, click
here.
-
- How do I get an Ph.D. in Statistics?
- If you are interested in a applying to our Ph.D. program in Statistics, click
here. If you want information about the program, click
here.
-
- Where do your graduate students go after finishing their
degree?
- The graduates of our program have become Teachers at Universities, Post
Doctorates at Labs, Statisticians, Engineers, gone into the computer industry
and the banking industry.
Courses and Teaching
- Which lower division courses do you offer?
- We currently offer four lower division courses in Statistics. For
more information about these courses, click
here.
-
- Which upper division courses do you offer?
- Currently, the Department has 16 upper-division courses that have been
approved. For more information about these courses, click
here.
-
- What grade do I need in AP statistics to be wavered
from stat 10?
- You need to receive a score of 4 or 5.
-
- If I have taken AP statistics in high school, what is
the next class I should take?
- This depends on whether you are still in HS or in college. If you are
in HS, you should follow-up with as much math as you can take. If you are
going to college, then your college or university might accept the AP Test
as credit towards its quantitative literacy requirement. This gives you
some flexibility in choosing your next Statistics class, and this choice
will be influenced by the requirements of the major you choose.
-
- Which graduate courses do you offer?
- Currently, the Department has 43 graduate courses that have been approved. For
more information about these courses, click
here.
-
- What is the Center for the Teaching of Statistics?
- The Center for the Teaching of Statistics seeks
to provide a model for Statistics education in the Southern California
region by integrating research in Statistics and Pedagogy with technological
innovations.
-
- Is there a UCLA Statistics computer lab?
- Yes! It is located in 9413 Boelter Hall.
Statistics in High Schools
- What are the statistics courses offered in high school?
- Many high schools offfer AP Statistics, a full year, using the Collge
Board outline. Fewer offer an elective non AP Stat course for a full year
or semester. Statistics is also a part of many math curricula in the "reform" programs
such as Chicago series, Core Plus from Michigan, or CPM.
-
- What percentage of high school students are taking AP
statistics?
- No one knows for sure. But last year there were about 34000 exams taken.
In 1997 there were about 7500 exams, 15000 in 1998, and 25000 in 1999.
-
- I'm a high school student. What statistics courses should
I take to get ready for AP statistics?
- The pre-requisite for AP Stat is second year algebra. However, at some
schools, Math Analysis/Precalculus is recommended.
-
- What statistics courses should I take to get ready for
teaching AP statistics?
- You should take at least one statistics course taught by a genuine statistician.
This course should use actual data and should give you hands-on experience
using a statistical software package on a computer. You should also take
as much math as possible, and a mathematical statistics class wouldn't
hurt, either.
-
- What statistics course should I take to get ready for
teaching statistics at the middle school level?
- Statistics as its own subject is not (yet!) offered at most middle schools.
However, some math curricula do have statistics and data analysis in them.
We recommend that anyone interested in teaching statistics take a statistics
class taught by an actual statistician at least once in their career. Such
a class is more likely to teach the subtleties of working with real data
than a course that focuses on mathematics.
-
- What software should I use for teaching AP Statistics?
- This is a subject of much debate, and personal preference plays a role.
Probably most AP classes use a TI calculator, and for them this question
is moot. Even when the calculator is used prominently, though, the students
can still learn much by using statistical software on a computer. (Doing
so makes exploratory and descriptive analyses much more powerful, for example.)
The trade-off in choosing software is between number-crunching power and
ease-of-use. SAS and Stata are two popular packages in use by professional
statisticians, and yet both are very difficult to teach and to learn. On
the other hand, Data Desk and Fathom are two packages that emphasize user-friendliness
at the expense of some number-crunching power. AP statistics students do
not need that much number-crunching power, nor are they required to have
knowledge of SAS or Stata, and so either Data Desk of Fathom would probably
be very useful for your classroom. Both also have useful tutorials and
interactive lessons. (Data Desk is bundled with Activ Stats, and electronic
statistics tutorial and reference book.)
-
- What book should I use to teach AP Statistics?
- A popular book is "The Practice of Statistics", Yates, Moore,
and McCabe.
-
- Where can I find interesting data sets?
- There are many sources on the web. We suggest our department's "Data
Sets" link. The DASL,
the Data and Story Library, is another good source.
-
- What workshops can I attend that help me with hands
on teaching?
- Cal Math Projects (CMP), such as UCLA's program, model hands-on teaching
at its best. Although the focus of CMP is not limited to statistics, the
problem solving skills are valuable to any teacher. College Board sponsors
week-long AP stat workshops during the summer and one day sessions during
the year. Most are held on college or school campuses. All of these opportunities
model hands-on teaching. Thacher School in Ojai offers week-long technology
workshops during the summer which also feature hands-on. LA and other County
offices support this program. TI, Casio, Key Curriculum and others offer
week-long and day long sessions which incorporate technology and model
hands-on, activity based instruction. College Prep Math (CPM) and Core
Plus and other math reform programs offer instruction for teachers who
are using or considering their program. All feature hands-on and activities
and writing to improve understanding.
-
- How can I prepare my students for the AP exam?
- Doing the practice probems from previous exams (available at the College
Bard website) during the year, not just in the final weeks, is a good preparation
for the actual AP exam. Using exam questions from Barron's or Amsco and
from colleagues will help students get used to how others might ask a question.
A week-end review session or a mock exam, close to the actual exam date,
helps students gear up for the test.
