A Message From The Program Director….
Professor Long Nguyen
Director of Master’s Program (Applied Statistics)
Dear students and families of class 2020,
I hope this message finds you and your family in safe conditions and a healthy state of mind amid the current siege of the pandemic, whether you are presently in Ann Arbor, your state or home country.
In spite of the unprecedented and on-going challenges in our society and our lives, I am thankful and very happy to have this opportunity to write to you and your family regarding an important milestone of your career: you have graduated with a Master’s degree in Applied Statistics from the University of Michigan. You are a graduated Wolverine!
On behalf of the University of Michigan Statistics department’s faculty and staff, congratulations!
Most of you have completed the study in two years. You have come a long way.Two years ago, you were among the 72 students that had been selected from a pool of nearly 750 strong applicants. You came from all over the world, along with a cohorts of diverse undergraduate background ranging from engineering and business fields to physical and social sciences.
You have chosen to study statistics because you found in this discipline its usefulness and versatility in so many different fields. Through the education and training I think you have also come to appreciate Statistics’s beauty and deep strength in giving us the guidance to think clearly and to make informed decisions when given all kinds of data that come our way.
To achieve the Master’s degree you have had to go through UM’s rigorous program that provides with a foundation in statistical inference and probability, as well as the most advanced techniques in data analysis, statistical computing and machine learning. You have worked with UM’s world-class faculty and staff members. I believe that through our demanding course projects, presentations and in some cases, cutting-edge research experience, you have acquired the tools, knowledge, and the confidence necessary to take on challenging data-driven problems in the real-world. Now you have earned the right to be called an UM-trained statistician.
Many students in our cohorts are also statistics educators in their roles as excellent graduate student instructors in our many undergraduate courses. We thank you for such important contributions to the department and to our field.
I wish to take this opportunity to thank your family and friends. We are grateful to all those who have provided the mental and financial support that are so crucial for your achieving the completion of your study.
As statisticians we work in the business of uncertainty. We deal with all sorts of data and signals, be they clean, noisy or purely random. We draw useful information and knowledge from such data in our reasoning so as to make sound decisions under uncertainty. Perhaps we have never been in a more uncertain moment in our lifetime.
At this time some of you are fortunate enough to have had your job lined up, but many others are still looking for an opening and pondering the future. I am convinced that you are much more equipped now than you were two years ago. I am hopeful that as statisticians you will be well-positioned to help weather the current storm for yourself and family, to overcome the challenges of the moment, while helping to make our world a better place.
I sincerely wish you all the best in your future endeavors. Please keep us posted for your progress. We would like to hear more of your experiences and successes. Congratulations again and Go Blue!
Memories and Plans for Masters of Applied Statistics Graduates
