Data Science

The Centre for Research in Mathematics provides a mathematical and statistical consulting service. The service is free for staff and research students at Western Sydney University and there are currently no restrictions on the number of consultations. The service is also available for external clients, for a competitive fee.

External Consultations

The consulting unit is available for solutions to problems in a wide range of fields. we can help with questionnaire design, study design, data analysis, data mining, prediction, intepretation and communication of results, graphical presentation, critical review and tailoring courses.
We have consultants with skills in the use of statistical software such as R, SPSS, AMOS, Stata, SAS and GraphPad Prism.

Some examples of past consultations include:

  • Provision of understanding of the community and habitat structure of key species and communities of finfishes for fisheries management purposes. Techniques implemented included regression and Bayesian ordination. The analyses provided information on species interactions, species' habitat identification and abundance predictions in new regions.
  • Prediction of adult obesity from childhood measures using both state-of-the-art machine learning techniques and more traditional regression techniques.
  • Provision of forecasts using using exponential smoothing state space models and maps using kernel density estimation for a report funded by the nbnTM.

If you are interested in employing the statistical consulting, please contact Russell Thomson.

Student and Staff Consultations

While the service is free, students are advised to check with their supervisors first before booking an appointment. Consultation can be useful for topics such as study design, sample size calculation, data analysis, interpretation and presentation of results and responding to reviewers comments. While consultation is available at any stage, it is often better to book an appointment during the design phase of a research project. Consultation is also available for problems in applied and pure mathematics. If the problem is beyond the statistical consultant's expertise, due care will be taken to find someone within the school that can help. To book an appointment, please contact Russell Thomson.

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