M.Sc. PROGRAM IN STATISTICS An interdisciplinary program that draws faculty members from five faculties and schools across the McMaster campus and the Canada Centre for Inland Waters offers students the opportunity to specialize in:

• Medical Statistics (biostatistics)
• Applied Statistics
• Statistical Theory
• Applied Probability

Admission

B.A. or B.Sc. honours degree, B+ standing, or equivalent, with a good background in statistics and mathematics. Students with a degree in engineering, science, health sciences, or social sciences will enthusiastically be considered, provided they have a B+ average with sufficient mathematics and statistics background. Students coming from other areas may be required to take additional undergraduate courses to make up any deficiencies.


Students can earn the M.Sc. degree following one of the options below. In both options students can take up to two 600-level courses to fulfill their graduate course requirements. All Master statistics students are required to attend the weekly Statistics seminar during the Fall and Winter terms, and also submit written reports on six seminars delivered during the year.

Thesis Option

Students choosing the Thesis Option are required to complete six one-semester graduate courses (consisting of four compulsory and two elective courses) and a thesis. Equivalent in work to two one-semester courses, the thesis is written under the supervision of a faculty member of the program in a topic of mutual interest to student and supervisor. The degree requirements are normally completed in four academic terms.

Coursework Option

The Coursework Option requires completion of eight one-term graduate courses (consisting of four compulsory and four elective courses). The degree requirements are normally completed in two or three academic terms.

Required Courses

 In the Statistics Program, there are required, elective, and special topics courses. Required courses cover the basic theoretical concepts that are considered essential for all students. Another required course develops a broad knowledge of statistics through attendance at research seminars as well as report-writing skills through critical written reviews of the seminars. The elective courses are traditional statistics courses covering a sufficient variety of topics to offer students a choice based upon their individual interests. Approved courses from other graduate programs may be taken as elective courses for graduate credit.

• STATS 743 / Foundations of Statistics (two one-term courses Stats 743 A & B)
• STATS 752 / Linear Models and Experimental Designs (one one-term course)
• STATS 770 / Statistics Seminar

Our teaching faculty is drawn from the departments of:

• Mathematics and Statistics
• Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics
• Sociology
• Electrical and Computer Engineering
• Economics

A variety of elective courses is available to cater to individual interests. A major area of specialization is health and medical statistics, with theses supervised by biostatisticians from the Health Sciences Centre who are faculty members in the program. Through courses and thesis work students learn about modern methodologies and do research on current health problems. Students interested in a broader area of applied or theoretical statistics may obtain training in one or more of the following areas: environmetrics, time series analysis, stochastic models in biology, statistical methods in genetics, economics, nonlinear models, applied statistics, order statistics, reliability, analysis of censored data, the booststrap and other resampling methods, nonparametric methods, comparative inference, and quality control. Our Research Data Centre, a Statistics Canada unit at McMaster, holds large real-life data sets from longitudinal surveys that are suitable for statistical analyses for theses and other research projects. Students interested in business or industrial applications may arrange to do their thesis work off-campus. Those interested in combining statistics with financial mathematics can take courses offered by the PhiMac Group at McMaster.

Our graduates have enjoyed a remarkable success rate in finding jobs and have gone to work for Statistics Canada, Health Canada, Canadian Institute for Health Information, industry, hospital research labs, polling companies, Revenue Canada, pharmaceutical companies, banks, marketing research, among others. Others have gone to pursue Ph.D. studies and become successful researchers. We offer a Ph.D. Statistics Specialization within our Ph.D. Program in Mathematics.

The Department of Mathematics and Statistics is housed in the James Stewart Centre for Mathematics at Hamilton Hall. An award winning renovation project made this historic building the finest facilities of any Statistics Program in Canada.

MSc Statistics Degrees Awarded