Mathematics and Statistics

I was an undergraduate student in the Mathematics department from 1991 to 1994. I chose to go to Murdoch for the simple reason that it was closest to home. Luckily for me, it also turned out to be a wonderful experience. The courses offered covered a wide range of topics and were of a high standard. I concentrated mainly on applied mathematics and statistics. Throughout my studies, I found the staff to be extremely friendly and easily approachable. They always had time to talk about courses, problems and to give out career advice. After working for a year after graduation, I found I wasn't making use of the knowledge I had gained and so decided to pursue a PhD. My lecturers at Murdoch provided a wealth of information on which universities to consider and were of great help to me throughout the application process. When I started my studies at UC Berkeley, I was made aware of just how good the courses at Murdoch had been - I had already covered much of the applied statistics coursework as an undergraduate. I am now a postdoc in Computational Molecular Biology at EURANDOM in the Netherlands and still occasionally refer to my old course notes from Murdoch.

I am a Senior Research Scientist with the Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO). Although DSTO has only a small presence in Western Australia we are part of an Australia Wide Organisation that employs many professional and research and technical staff. Our role is to provide science and technology advice for the Australian Defence Organisation. As might be imagined, this work spans many disciplines.

I started with DSTO after completing and undergraduate degree then PhD with Mathematics and Statistics at Murdoch University. I was a mature age student and started a little tentatively by enrolling for units in the external mode. Though starting university study was not easy, the Murdoch Mathematics and Statistics staff were very supportive. In time I changed to internal enrolment and the fact that I now have a PhD is testament to their continued support. As a student at Murdoch I appreciated the fact that my lecturers and tutors were approachable and were genuinely interested in the quality of their teaching as well as their research.

My time at Murdoch was filled with great satisfaction. Coming from UWA, I noticed the difference immediately. The thing that struck me the most was the friendliness and helpfulness of the lecturers, not to mention the degree of contact possible with students from other courses. I completed a minor in Applied Statistics in conjunction with my BSc (Biomedical Science) degree before completing the major. I found the units to consist of a good balance between practise and theory. Apart from my fondness of mathematics, I was attracted to statistics due to its diverse range of applications in the real world.

In addition to my study, I was involved in other Departmental initiatives such as the Mathematics Clinic and Statistical Consulting Course, which I found to be very useful in developing the people skills that employers� value so much these days.

Before my degree was even complete, I received interest from employers, both locally and interstate, in various industries including the medical and financial services industries. I would recommend the Murdoch Mathematics/Statistics program to anyone interested in realising their full potential in a professional and rewarding career. I am now employed as Project Manager-Trainee with a Cost Management Consultancy called Bannon Laferla Jones (Australia) here in Perth.

I started my Mathematics and Statistics degree at Murdoch in 1997 and completed my honours year in 2000. Over the course of my degree I focused on applied maths rather than statistics and my electives consisted mainly of computer science units. In my honours year I studied Fractal Image Compression under the supervision of Jo Ward. I am currently working in Canberra for the Department of Defence where the mathematical and programming skills I acquired at Murdoch have been well utilised. I am working in an interesting environment with people who are motivated to further their mathematical knowledge and to find practical applications for this knowledge.

My time at Murdoch was a positive experience. The staff were very friendly and approachable and I also enjoyed the student social life. The mathematics units were well structured and contained interesting and useful material. In terms of my current job, the most useful skill that I developed while studying at Murdoch was the ability to research and analyse different problems. More important than the actual content of the units I studied, these skills have enabled me to tackle new problems with a high degree of confidence.

I completed an honours degree in mathematics at Murdoch University in 1990. My honours thesis was in the area of time series analysis. Following my Honours year at Murdoch I started working as a part-time statistics tutor in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at Curtin University (Western Australia). To further my study, I enrolled in a Masters degree by research and then a PhD. My primary research area has been time series analysis and its applications. At about the same time, I worked at the School of Psychology at Curtin University on the mathematical statistics/modelling aspects of a multi-disciplinary project that applied time series models to analyse the spontaneous movements of infants.

In 2000, I started working at Customer Management Group of ING Australia as Marketing Analyst-Statistical Modeller. In ING, I had nearly two years experience in practising my mathematical/statistical knowledge and analytical skills on the analysis of customers and products. In particular, I developed the Household Value Model (a mathematical and statistical way to understand the customers), which estimates the specific product consumption level based on key customer demographic drivers. The Model was developed for unique segmentation that aims to discover key demographic drivers of consumption, and to understand the relationship between household demographics and product consumption levels and also the relationship between household demographics and product mix.

After ING, I joined Bancorp Advantage Market Solutions as a Statistician. It is there that I am currently working on a number of client and development projects, including direct marketing, strategic planning and development of decision support systems. I have mainly developed the response models for direct marketing campaigns, and also I have developed an econometrics model - to project the Australian credit demand in next 12 months. The latter gives the comprehensive consumer credit demand that is driven by leading economic indictors and key demographic drivers. The model provides accurate forecasts of consumer credit demand in Australia at different levels. I also have developed a geo-demographic landscape model as a segmentation model, which uses a combination of statistical concepts and methodologies to establish a way that easily differentiates between the diverse types of people in a certain geographic area.

In fact, my honours degree at Murdoch University gave me a good grounding in all aspects of mathematical statistical modelling concepts. Specifically, the time series analysis course gave me sound basic fundamental knowledge and helped me to understand what the issues are. It was also the reason why I have been keeping this direction in my research career and it continues to provide a comprehensive background knowledge in my applied career in the finance and marketing areas.

I studied at Murdoch from 1993 to 1996, completing a Mathematics degree with honours. During my honours year I was assisted financially by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), on the agreement that I would commence work with them once I had finished. In January 1997 I moved to Canberra and began in the methodology Division. A year later I transferred to the Perth office. Apart from a seven month stint at the Institute of Child Health Research where I worked as a biometrician, I have remained in the WA ABS office.

In both Canberra and Perth my role has been to provide statistical support and leadership to others in the organisation. It is also my role to ensure the methodological soundness of practices employed by the various survey areas. This involves an aspect of education, and a large amount of data analysis.

A mathematics degree is essential to my job, and the grounding that I received whilst at Murdoch has been extremely useful. Studying at Murdoch was great, the atmosphere and attitude from the staff was always positive and friendly and there was freedom to bend your degree towards what most interested you.

The Mathematics and Statistics degree that I obtained from Murdoch University has certainly been the most important training that I have undertaken to pursue my career and I believe that the course has developed significantly since I graduated. I would recommend the Mathematics and Statistics degree at Murdoch University to any student wanting to further develop their problem solving skills and broaden their career prospects.

My current job title is Senior Policy Analyst with the Health Economics and Research Unit at the Department of Health Western Australia. The major roles of this position are:

• to coordinate the collection, collation, evaluation and analysis of WA hospital cost related data for the National Hospital Cost Data Collection for the Commonwealth,
• to aid in the development and maintenance of the WA Health funding model which is a statistical model that is created from extensive modelling of cost data information from major hospitals and is used by the WA Department of Health in funding WA public hospitals,
• to furnish key stakeholders in the funding process with information and analyses from both the funding model and the hospital morbidity data system (WA's largest public sector database) to aid in purchasing, funding and management decisions.

Previous to this position I worked for the WA Police Service as an Information Analyst. The major role of this position was to research and analyse all data received and gathered relative to the day-to-day operations of officers in the WA Police Service within a district and to manage and present that data in a meaningful format. In addition the position required close liaison with other sections within the service as well as external stakeholders, development and delivery of intelligence briefings and ensuring the maintenance of protocol for the management of security.

The key criteria for both the above positions are strong analytical and conceptual ability. This can be developed through work experience but I believe it is borne from a good basis in learning and for me this was provided in the BSc (Hons) in Mathematics that I completed at Murdoch University. I majored in applied statistics and also completed 2 years of a Computer Science degree at the same time. The skills that I learned from my study in Mathematics have helped in a variety of situations. There are the tasks such as statistical modelling, data analysis and presentation which obviously require the skills taught in Mathematics & Statistics, but it is the overall approach to problem solving that has been most useful.

Students that study Mathematics develop skills that become highly sought after in the workplace such as:

• the ability to think logically and apply this to problem solving,
• highly developed analytical and conceptual skills that can be used in a variety of different applications,
• a range of tools and techniques that can be applied in any field or industry,
• a degree of numeric literacy that enables analysis of highly technical problems,
• an aptitude and skill base conducive to further learning and training.

I began my degree in Mathematics at Murdoch University in 1994 not knowing what it would lead to. During the second half of my studies I focused more on the Applied Mathematics and Statistics units available. At the completion of my studies I undertook a Graduate Diploma of Education and began a career as a high school mathematics teacher.

I didn't move far from the University, teaching at Winthrop Baptist College and currently at Somerville Baptist College, both located on the southern side of the campus. The applications that were demonstrated during Engineering Mathematics, Operations Research and in many Statistics units at Murdoch I still quote to students in my classes today. My students are often surprised that what they are learning has relevance and use in the 'real world'.

Students have the mentality that they will not need mathematics after school finishes and develop a stronger appreciation of the importance of mathematics when I share with them the diverse range of applications that I was exposed to through the undergraduate degree at Murdoch University.