As part of the completion requirements of an M.S. in Statistics degree from Montana State University, students are required to complete a thesis (Plan A) or writing project (Plan B). Masters students typically start thinking about who they would like to work with towards the end of their second semester. If you are interested in working with me, here is some more information about my expectations, research areas, and project topic ideas.

The Statistics group hosts a writing project LaTeX template on GitHub and a webpage with copies of all past MS Statistics student Writing Projects, which you can find here:

Expectations

As part of the writing project process, students who work with me will learn and use effective methods for reproducible research:

  1. Compose your writing project in LaTeX.
  2. Learn and use Git and Github as your version control system for your project.
  3. Use Zotero (or similar) and BibTeX as your reference management system.

I will work with you to learn these tools and become comfortable with a reproducible research workflow. Here are some places to get started:

Research Areas and Topic Ideas

My primary research area is in statistics and data science education, with secondary interests in STEM and computer science education, time series analysis, and environmental statistics. I'm also a big fan of statistical theory, and I have taught courses in linear models, generalized linear models, mixed-effects models, longitudinal data analysis, categorical data analysis, combinatorics, probability and mathematical statistics.

I typically have a running list of potential research questions and data sets that would be suitable for a writing project. Please make an appointment with me to discuss your ideas further!

MS Writing Projects Supervised

  • "Application of the Cox Regression Model to Estimate Dropout Rate in Introductory Statistics" (2018) 
    • Author: David Lartey
  • "Is it a Cat or a Dog? Convolutional Neural Networks Have the Answer" (2018)
    • Author: Savannah Mooney