The Plymouth University Statistics and Data Science Group is an impact focused collaboration of researchers that supports a broad applied remit by building on a methodological theme of computationally intensive data modelling and analytics. Our overarching strategy is to continue to develop novel, computationally-intensive, statistical and data science methodology to address real problems from a range of application areas, by strategically capitalizing on the skills and expertise of staff, our very strong external and interdisciplinary links and our high performance computing facilities.

Our areas of research can be summarized as

• Modelling and Inference
  •  Computational Statistics
  •  Multivariate Dependency Modelling using Copulas
  • Modelling Integer Data
  • Model Selection
  • Sample Selection
  • Time Series Modelling and Inference
•  Statistical Learning
  • Big Data Modelling
  • Data Integration
  • Data Visualization
  • Social Media Information Extraction
• Statistical Methods in Medicine and Health
  • Clinical Trials
  • Evidence Synthesis and Meta-Analysis
  • Infectious Disease and Cancer Epidemiology
• Statistical Methods in Business and Finance
  • Business Internationalization
  • Information Quality
  • Risk Management
  • Economic and Financial Time Series Analysis
• Statistics Education

Members of the group work on a range of methodological, applied and consultancy projects. Motivation and data for our research come through our interdisciplinary, international, medical and governmental links. These collaborations mean that we maintain the relevance and applicability of our work to research users, whilst ensuring that it has an international impact.

Our research activities are vitalized through a well-attended and wide-ranging seminar programme. The Plymouth based Royal Statistical Society South West Group holds the majority of its meetings at Plymouth University and we have close links with the Exeter Initiative for Statistics and its Applications.

We are active members of the statistics community, performing refereeing and associate editorial duties for international journals and grant awarding bodies. We have given service to the Committee of Professors of Statistics as Treasurer since 2000 and to the Royal Statistical Society on Council and on the General Applications Section Committee as Chair and Secretary. We engage in a range of outreach activities, as part of which we have recently spoken on the BBC and contributed a number of articles to Significance and other magazines.