Statistics

Mason statistics students joined citizen scientists from around the world to hedge their bets in the competition and predict peak cherry blossom bloom dates in four locations—Washington, D.C., Kyoto, Japan, Vancouver, Canada, and Liestal-Weideli, Switzerland.  

The American Statistical Association (ASA) Census Quality Indicators Taskforce selected assistant professor of statistics Jonathan Auerbach to independently review the 2020 census as part of a three-person research team. Ironically the major finding was what they didn't find -- evidence of malfeasance or wrongdoing.

The Department of Statistics is poised for major growth with new leadership, new hires, and new alliances. These include not only the regular statistics hires but also the Tech Talent Investment Pipeline, a cluster hire in computational systems biomedicine, potential joint positions with other departments, and organizational collaborations.

Inova Children’s Hospital, the Virginia Department of Health, and Mason Engineering joined forces last summer to conduct a COVID-19 antibody study to analyze the incidence of COVID-19 in Northern Virginia’s children.

Four seniors majoring in statistics––Emily Litzenberg, Kate Lang, Nate Mulugeta, and Shannon Connor––received an honorable mention for the best use of external data at the American Statistical Association’s (ASA) Fall Data Challenge 2020.

Mason Engineering researchers are joining forces with Inova Children’s Hospital for a project that will provide valuable data about the incidence of COVID-19 in children in Northern Virginia to school administrators and other decision-makers in the area.

Research Interests: Nonparametric statistics, geometric data analysis, machine learning, extreme value theory