Department of Statistics

The Department of Statistics (DOS) came into existence in the year 2018 following an executive order of his excellency the Vice Chancellor that resulted in the splitting the then, Department of Mathematics and Statistics (DOMAS) into two departments, Department of Mathematics and Department of Statistics. Its first head took office on the second of September 2018. The Department is the first, and so far the only, department of Statistics in the Sultanate of Oman's universities and tertiary education institutions.

The department offers programs leading to the award of Bachelor of Science in Statistics (BSc. Statistics), Master Science in Statistics (MSc. Statistics) and Doctor of Philosophy in Statistics (PhD. Statistics). It also offers a special minor in Health Statistics which is designed for students pursuing careers as Statisticians in the Ministry of Health. A general minor in Statistics is also offered to students of other majors at the College of Science.

All these programs were in place prior to the existence of the department, so a bit of history is in order. The bachelor degree in Statistics started 1993, together with degrees in Mathematics and Computer Science, under the then department of Mathematics and Computing (DOMAC). The Department of Computer Science became a separate department in September 1995, and DOMAC became the Department of Mathematics and Statistics (DOMAS). The other statistics programs that started under the DOMAS are the minor in Health Statistics (1998), Master of Science in Statistics (1999) and PhD in Statistics (2010).

The department is committed to quality teaching, research and community service. It aspires to:

Fulfill the role of Sultan Qaboos University (SQU) as the reference and national house of expertise in the theory and application of Statistics,
Open wider the doors for interdisciplinary research of direct relevance to the Sultanate of Oman,
Impact and invigorate the Sultanate Qaboos University's statistics academic programs,
Pursue cutting edge research, as well as support it through collaboration
Enhance statistical consulting and community services' involvement, and
Inspire new ways to work together with the community,

We hope you will find the information in this website useful and encouraging to contact and establish links with the Department of Statistics. For any information, please do not hesitate to contact us at DeptofStat@squ.edu.om

Vision

To offer quality statistics education that produces life-long learners, creative problem-solvers, productive employees and responsible citizens.

Mission

To contribute to the overall objectives of Sultan Qaboos University through excellence in statistics education, research and service to the university community and society at large.

Statistics is the study and manipulation of data, concerned with developing and studying methods for collecting, analyzing, interpreting and presenting empirical data. Statistical methods are important for addressing questions in various fields of science such as industry, public policy, medicine, and virtually every branch of human life.

Worldwide, the demand for using statistical methods has increased dramatically with the big abundance of large databases in fields like web traffic, human genome, social media and e-marketing and trading.

It is the actual need to analyze this large flux in data production that drives researchers to develop new statistical methods to answer the questions that the data poses

The Department of Statistics (DOS) came into existence in the year 2018 following an executive order of his excellency the Vice Chancellor that resulted in the splitting the then, Department of Mathematics and Statistics (DOMAS) into two departments, Department of Mathematics and Department of Statistics. The Department is the first, and so far the only, department of Statistics in the Sultanate of Oman's universities and tertiary education institutions.

The department is committed to quality teaching, research and community service. It aspires to:

Fulfill the role of Sultan Qaboos University (SQU) as the reference and national house of expertise in the theory and application of Statistics,
Open wider the doors for interdisciplinary research of direct relevance to the Sultanate of Oman,
Impact and invigorate the Sultanate Qaboos University's statistics academic programs,
Pursue cutting edge research, as well as support it through collaboration
Enhance statistical consulting and community services' involvement, and
Inspire new ways to work together with the community.

Department of Statistics

College of Science, Sultan Qaboos University

PO Box 36, Al Khod 123, Sultanate of Oman

Phone: (968) 2414 1433

Email: Deptofstat@squ.edu.om

Website: https://www.squ.edu.om/science/Departments/Statistics

BSc%20Statistics

Below are some of the ongoing PhD research studies at the Department of Statistics:

Title: Skewed Elliptical Distributions and their Applications: [PhD Student: Iman Al Hashmi - 47910]

Summary: The main objectives of the proposed research are to construct a new ECD and skewed ECD, and investigate their mathematical properties as well as to use the constructed distributions in applied contexts and compare their performances with the existing results.

Title: On multivariate classification and minimization of misclassification rates: [PhD Student: Mubarak Al Shukeili - 29026]

Summary: The main objective of the study is to develop statistical model aimed to generate optimal separable hyperplanes that minimizes the MCR. Performance of other classification methods and techniques will be studied theoretically. A method based on the MM Principle will be developed. New classification method based on the support vector machine (SVM) will be proposed and validated theoretically and numerically using simulated and real life data.

Title: Bias reduction in parameter estimation under missing data conditions: [PhD Student: Muna Al Shaaibi - 46933]

Summary: The main objective of this study is propose a method of estimating parameters under data missingness condictions. The EM algorithm and MI are popular methods for dealing with missing data which show superiority over the traditional methods. Inspite of these efforts, parameters derived from these methods are still associated with high biases in the estimated parameters. Missing data present various problems. The proposed method will be validated and its performance compared with the current methods using simulation studies as well as real life data.

Title: Parametric sub-distribution hazard model for clustered competing risks: [PhD Student: Noora Al Shanfari - 11906]

Summary: The main objective of this study is to analyse clustered competi g risk data using parametric approach. In the presence of competing, two different models can be used to analyze competing risk data, the cause-specific hazard model and the subdistribution hazard model. The latter model is used to estimate the effect of the covariates on the cumulative incidence function. However, in medical research, there are applications involving competing risks where individuals may be correlated. in this case, two models can be fit, the frailty model and the marginalized model. Marginal models have a population-averaged interpretation. Few attempts have been made for modeling clustered competing risk data using marginalized models. However, until now no attempts have been made using a parametric approach.