This course is intended for PhD students in Statistics, Biostatistics, and other quantitative fields. The prerequisties are:
There is no textbook, although the two-volume set entitled Breakthroughs in Statistics edited by Johnson adn Kotz (New York: Springer, 1993) is recommended. Jon Wellner's lecture notes from a previous offering of 581-3 are available, and are referred to frequently in the syllabus. Although I will not lecture from them, they contain much useful material. Dr. Wellner will be teaching STAT 582-3. The syllabus contains references for each section. (References for Wellner's lecture notes are available separately.) A variety of books will be on four hour reserve in the Mathematics-Statistics Research Library. Part of the purpose of this is to encourage browsing, and teach you how to find material in the literature. Furthermore, no single book covers the material we will be talking about. There will be lecture notes summaries (covering what I consider the most important results) available on the web. Edgeworth series notes corrected Nov. 2
I will be trying to stray a little from the usual theorem-proof lecture
style. We will do a group research project,
where the students need to search the literature, devise approaches to a
given problem, assess the quality of their solutions, and present their
work to the class. We will also spend considerable time in class discussing
ways to solve homework problems. Rather than handing in homework solutions
to be graded, the students will usually be presenting and discussing their solutions
in class. In order to get some feedback, two homework sets will be graded.
Part of your grade will be based on your presentation and participation
in the discussions.
Syllabus
Research Projects
Schedule of
presentations is now available.
Help is available on the following topics: