• Inactive for Year: 2024/25

• Module Leader(s): Dr Clement Lee

• Owning School: Mathematics, Statistics and Physics
• Teaching Location: Newcastle City Campus

Semesters

Your programme is made up of credits, the total differs on programme to programme.

Aims

More data than ever before are being generated and stored, in a variety of fields across industry. The term "big data" has emerged in acknowledgement of the vast amounts of data now available. By applying statistical analyses to these data sets, we can start to use them to answer important questions such as (i) which are the important factors affecting the quality of an industrial process; (ii) how many different types of customer are interested in your product. Commonly the data sets that arise in industry are multivariate, comprising a large number of observations on many variables. In this module we study how we can learn from data sets of this form. Attention is paid to the statistical and mathematical theory underpinning the methods, in addition to their practical application using R.

Specifically, the module aims to equip students with the following knowledge and skills:

- To gain an understanding of the theory behind modern statistical approaches to learning from data.
- To gain experience in the application of these techniques to the analysis of large and complex data sets across a range of application areas.

Outline Of Syllabus

- Fundamentals of multivariate data analysis, including data representation, summary and core applications of linear algebra
- Theory and practice of principal components analysis
- Cluster analysis
- Linear regression, including variable selection, regularisation (ridge regression, the lasso, the elastic net) and dimension-reduction techniques
- Classification, including discriminant analysis and logistic regression
- Generalized linear models
- Tree-based methods, including regression trees, classification trees and random forests

Teaching Methods

Teaching Activities

Teaching Rationale And Relationship

Lectures and set reading are used for the delivery of theory and explanation of methods, illustrated with examples. Practicals are used both for solution of problems and work requiring extensive computation and to give insight into the ideas/methods studied. There are two present-in-person practical sessions per week to ensure rapid feedback on understanding. Scheduled present-in-person drop-ins provides opportunity for students to ask questions and receive immediate feedback.

Assessment Methods

The format of resits will be determined by the Board of Examiners

Other Assessment

Zero Weighted Pass/Fail Assessments

Formative Assessments

Formative Assessment is an assessment which develops your skills in being assessed, allows for you to receive feedback, and prepares you for being assessed. However, it does not count to your final mark.

Assessment Rationale And Relationship

A compulsory formative practical report allows the students to develop their problem solving techniques, to practise the methods learnt in the module, to assess their progress and to receive feedback, before the summative assessments.

The oral presentation encourages students to focus on interpretation of statistical results, builds their skills in the presentation of statistical concepts, and provides opportunity for feedback.

In a foundational subject like the Mathematical Sciences, there is research evidence to suggest that continual consolidation of learning is essential and the fewer pieces of assessment there are, the more difficult it is to facilitate this. On this module, it is particularly important that the material on the earlier summative assessment is fully consolidated, before the later assessment is attempted.

Reading Lists

• MAS8383's Reading List

Timetable

• Timetable Website: www.ncl.ac.uk/timetable/
• MAS8383's Timetable