The staff and students wish Professor Radloff all the best in her retirement. Emeriti Professor Radloff joined the staff of the department in 1972. During her distinguished career she taught extensively, published over 200 accredited publications and was awarded the Senior Vice-Chancellor’s Distinguished Research Award (2005). Sarah your optimism, fabulous sense of humour and enthusiasm motivated us. You made an immense contribution to the growth and development of all the students and staff in the department. Thank you.

The department wishes to thank Ms Thina Maqubela (2014-2021) for her contributions in the department, in particular for her concerted efforts teaching (Vice-Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award, 2019). Ndikunqwenelela konke okuhle kwiphulo lakho elitsha, huntshuuuu!

Professor Raubenheimer and Ms Langston were appointed in the department in January 2021. Despite the COVID-19 restrictions, the Department of Statistics continued pursuing a broad range of teaching and research interests and activities during 2021.

Ms Olwethu Dlangamandla complete her Masters of Science. Her thesis was titled a modelling approach to analysis of complex survey data. In her thesis Ms Dlangamandla discussed the development of appropriate complex survey methodological theory that is derived by extending and adapting the concepts of survey sampling to incorporate complex models. Ms Dlangamandla implemented an extensive simulation study of these complex survey models.

Mr Philip Mostert completed his Masters of Science, with distinction. His thesis was titled Bayesian accelerated life tests for the Weibull distribution under non-informative priors. In his thesis Mr Mostert derived and subsequently inspected five non-informative Bayesian estimates for the Weibull distribution in accelerated life testing. Mr Mostert conducted an extensive, detailed simulation study to investigate the appropriateness of the various estimation methods, including the coverage rates. These methods were subsequently applied to a real life time-to-failure application.

Three students graduated with a Bachelor of Science Honours in Mathematical Statistics, one with joint Bachelor of Science Honours in Mathematical Statistics and Mathematics. Nicolas Thekiso and Vuyolwethu Zumani attained distinctions.

Daniel Proestos attained a distinction for Mathematical Statistics 3.

Standard Bank presented a highly informative banking career seminars to the third year and postgraduate students during the course of the year. Mr Jurie Schoeman and the BSG team discussed the BSG internship and graduate placement programs. The Business Systems Group (BSG) took the students through a complete statistical analysis of a current BSG consulting project. This very interesting and highly informative seminar clearly demonstrated the practical application of the statistical concepts and theory that the students are learning in their courses. The BSG team strongly recommended that the students consider a career as a data scientist and provided many practical and useful tips and suggestions for the students with regards further study and career opportunities.

Last Modified: Tue, 15 Feb 2022 15:26:52 SAST