Statistics

Entry requirements

The normal entry requirements are a good upper second or first class honours degree from a UK university, or the equivalent from an overseas university, in Mathematics or in a subject with some significant mathematical content. Students should also have some knowledge of Probability and Statistics in their degree, at least up to what might be expected by the end of the second year of an undergraduate Mathematics degree.

Expected Background

You are expected to have a first degree with a substantial amount of mathematics including Probability and Statistics. As a minimum you should have done Calculus or Mathematical Analysis, Linear Algebra, two courses in Probability and two courses in Statistics. A Mathematical Statistics course may count as one Probability and one Statistics course depending on the syllabus. If your course is called Advanced Mathematics, then we need to know how much calculus/linear algebra it contains. You can have a look at what Manchester students do in the first two years, or refer to the following list for a quick summary.

• Calculus or Mathematical Analysis (functions of a single and several variables, continuity, derivatives, integrals, Mean Value Theorem, Taylor series expansion, minimisation and maximisation, Lagrange multipliers)
• Linear Algebra (linear independence, determinant, inverse, eigenvalues and eigenvectors)
• Probability I (probabilities and conditional probabilities, Bayes Theorem, moments)
• Probability II (multivariate and conditional distributions, generating functions, Law of Large Numbers and Central Limit Theorem)
• Statistics I (descriptive statistics, normal, t, chi-square and F distributions, significance tests)
• Statistics II (Maximum likelihood estimation, Likelihood ratio tests, simple regression and analysis of variance).

You are expected to have done well in the above courses and your university should have a high national standing.

Months of entry

September

Course content

The Probability and Statistics group in the Department of Mathematics have a long-standing reputation and experience of offering one year, high quality taught courses in areas of Statistics leading to the degree of MSc. These courses have aimed to offer a thorough professional training which prepare students to embark on statistical careers in a variety of areas. (There is a shortage of statisticians trained to postgraduate level in the UK and the employment prospects for such people remain good.) They have also provided a very good foundation for further study at PhD level.

Our current MSc programme in Statistics allows students to take a common core of five modules and an additional set of three specialist/additional modules depending on their interests and career aspirations.