UWC Department of Statistics and Population Studies

University of Western Cape UWC Department of Statistics and Population Studies

UWC Department of Statistics and Population Studies – See Details Below:

Head of Department’s Welcome message

Good day and Welcome to the Statistics and Population Studies Department at the University of the Western Cape.

Our Department revolves around two axes of teaching and research: Statistics and Population Studies, two growing and important fields as data become more and more used everywhere and every day for planning purposes, and understanding the challenges of our modern societies: from stock markets to human populations.

The Department offers a lively environment for studying and researching in the areas of applied statistics, computational finance and population studies. We offer Under-Graduate programmes as well as Post-Graduate programmes up to PhD level.

We value the interaction with students, and make sure that we happily come every day to share knowledge through teaching, learning and researching.

Thanks very much for your visit on our website, we look forward to answering any queries you might have on our Department in general, and on our programmes in particular.

Prof. Nancy Stiegler

The Department strives:

for research excellence, be it of theoretical or applied nature in fields of Statistics and Population Studies.
to train students who are well developed employable individuals.
to collaborate with departments at UWC and other academic institutions.
to continue further training for employees from industry and government.
to have excellent facilities to carry out its research, teaching and outreach.

Introduction

What is Statistics?

The popular image of Statistics in one of tables and graphs of everyday occurrences such as car crashes, car sales, rainfall, births and deaths and so on. The application of the science of Statistics usually results in a meaningful interpretation of tables and graphs, but this kind of investigation forms only a small part of the activities of this versatile discipline.

What is Population Studies?

Population Studies is a scientific study of the human population and more specifically the study of size, geographic distribution; age-sex structure and the socio-economic composition of populations. Population Studies furthermore studies the measurement of demographic processes in relation to economic development, social development, cultural and biological factors. Nationally the field of Population Studies is classified as a scarce skill.

To put it simply: Statistics and Population Studies Makes Sense of Numbers

This description means that Statistics includes the ways in which information is collected, processed and interpreted. These activities are based on sound scientific principles, particularly those of the queen of the sciences: Mathematics. The study of the occurrence and spread of diseases, and of the effective treatment of diseases cannot be undertaken without contributions from a statistician.

The development of new farming methods relies heavily on statistical techniques when designing and testing new machinery, engineers make extensive use of statistical principles.

In the collection of information concerning the quality of life of a country’s population, the planning, implementation and processing of nationwide surveys rest largely on the statistician and demographers. Long term as well as short term insurance is extremely dependant on the correct use of Statistics.