What are the odds of an undergraduate student being able to write a research paper in statistics that involves computational and mathematical analysis?
Much higher when guided by a mentor.
Two years ago, statistics student Sarah Wilde teamed up with Dr. Scott Grimshaw through IMPACT, a program that trains undergraduates in selected topics from upper-level courses in statistics, computer science, and math.
Dr. Grimshaw’s work in those three areas made him the perfect mentor for Wilde.
Dr. Grimshaw’s and Wilde’s efforts resulted in a recently-published peer-reviewed paper that demonstrates a reasonably simple method to approximate a family of estimators, even for data that has outliers.
“I work on research problems where statisticians have computational problems that would be interesting to computer scientists and vice versa,” said statistics professor Dr. Scott Grimshaw.
Dr. Grimshaw’s and Wilde’s efforts resulted in a recently published peer-reviewed paper that demonstrates a reasonably simple method to approximate a family of estimators, even for data that has outliers.
“I could tell that [Dr. Grimshaw] knew what he wanted me to do with the project,” Wilde said. “But he helped guide me to get there on my own.”
Dr. Grimshaw’s mentoring helped Wilde gain skills important for her job as a website analyst for Overstock.com.
“For my interviews for different positions I’ve held, they’ve asked me a lot about . . . my research,” Wilde said. “Some of the research process—the things I’ve learned while doing the project—I have actually used, because I work in a statistical job right now.”
Dr. Grimshaw remarked that the research process, especially for an undergraduate, is often not easy to navigate. The research paper itself took almost a year to complete.
“Wilde is very smart, highly motivated, a good writer, very patient,” Dr. Grimshaw said. “A lot of times with research, you go down dead ends, and she went down more than her fair share of dead ends. So at times we had to say, ‘OK. That approach isn’t going to work. How about this one?’”
The opportunity to write a research paper as an undergraduate may sound like an outlier, but in reality, the College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences has over 250 undergraduate students who have either presented at a professional conference or co-authored a research paper.