Data analytics is playing an incredibly important role in today’s ever evolving world. A large majority of the graduate students, as well as undergraduate students at McMaster University, are facing data-related problems on a daily basis, and many of them lack the skills of handling data. On the other hand, graduate students enrolled in the Statistics program who are capable of solving complex data problems are short of opportunities to apply their knowledge into projects and research from other disciplines. There is a strong demand to link the two parties together so that undergraduate and graduate students from other departments can have readily available statistical consultation and data analysis support from the well-trained graduate students in the statistics program. Herein, we propose a club that will provide graduate students along with undergraduate students at McMaster with direct assistance and solution with their statistical challenges and data-related problems from their fellow graduate students in the Statistics program.
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There are two main reasons for our project.
Firstly, we have identified that a large number of the graduate students are struggling to understand statistical concepts, conduct data analysis and interpret the results of their data analysis for their research. They are not equipped with the skillsets that are required for the data analytics in their research, and they are actively looking for professional support in managing and analyzing data. However, there are very limited resources available on campus where they can get trained and get professional consulting service for their data related problem. Hence, our aim is to minimize their difficulties in getting professional support in data analytics.
Secondly, the graduate students in the Statistics program are very well-trained statisticians who are very passionate about applying their knowledge into real-world projects as well as supporting other fellow graduate students with their research. However, it is very challenging for individual graduate student from the statistics program to reach out to the rest of the McMaster community for the professional service that they can provide, and there are very few opportunities for any interdisciplinary collaborations. Therefore, we want to build a platform where the professional statistical and data science consulting service from these graduate students in the Statistics program can be highly visible and easily accessible for the rest of the graduate and undergraduate students at McMaster University.
We have a group of high talented statisticians, namely the graduate students who are currently enrolled in the Statistics program, and they are very eager to apply their statistical knowledge and data science techniques into real-world projects and academic research in other disciplines. At the same time, graduate and undergraduate students from other programs have an increasingly demand in getting help for their data-related problems and also getting trainings in data science. We will build a bridge between these two parties, leveraging the skills of the graduate students from the Statistics program to support fellow graduate and undergraduate students from other disciplines with data analytics in their research.
Firstly, we will identify the graduate students currently registered in the Statistics program who are willing to take a role in statistics and data science consultancy.
Secondly, we will develop training materials for a variety of topics, including data visualization, R and machine learning. We will host a series of workshops in these topics for the graduate community.
Thirdly, we will reach out to the rest of the graduate and undergraduate community about the professional consulting service that the graduate students from the Statistics program can provide.
Lastly, we will link the graduate students who need help with their data related problems with the consultants.
Club manager: Angela Wang, Statistics, August 2021
Treasurer: Jing Cai, Statistics, August 2021
Outreach manager: Chenxi Yu, Statistics, August 2021
We hope to build a channel where the graduate students at McMaster University will have better access to professional consulting service in data analytics for their research.
We also expect that the graduate students from the Statistics program will gain valuable hands-on experience in applying their statistical knowledge into the real-world problems.
We believe that this project will eventually extend to a professional service where flexible and customizeddata solutions are provided for all students and researchers at McMaster University.
May 2019
Form the executive team
June-August 2019
- Reach out and recruit graduate students in the Statistics program to be statistical and data science consultant
- Develop training materials for R, data visualization, and machine learning
September to October 2019
Reach out to the McMaster community about the professional service that can be provided through the club
November 2019
Host workshops in R
December 2019 to March 2020
Link students who need assistance with statistics or data analysis with the consultants
April 2020
Host workshops in data visualization