# Welcome to the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science

The Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science is among the top academic units for statistical and actuarial science in the world and is home to more than 40 research active full-time faculty working in diverse and exciting areas. The Department is also home to over 900 undergraduate students and about 150 graduate students in programs including Actuarial Science, Biostatistics, Quantitative Finance, Statistics, and Statistics-Computing.

We are located on University of Waterloo main campus, which is located at the heart of Canada's Technology Triangle about 100 kilometers west of Toronto.

1. May 18, 2017First annual Datathon at the University of Waterloo

Over 550 Waterloo students applied for 100 spots at the first annual Waterloo Datathon (May 13th).  Like a Hackathon, students were given a set of materials and asked to solve a structured problem.  It involved working with a dataset, predictive modeling, interpretation and presentation of results.  This event sponsored by Citadel and powered by Correlation One in partnership with the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science awarded a top prize of $20,000 and second prize of$5,000 to the top two winning teams.

2. May 11, 2017Distinguished Lecture will be given by Professor Peter Diggle, Lancaster University on May 11, 2017

The Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science is pleased to announce that the first lecture in 2017 for the David Sprott Distinguished Lecture Series will be given by Professor Peter Diggle from Lancaster University on Thursday May 11, 2017 at 4 pm.

3. May 1, 2017Congratulations to John Dark, University of Waterloo alumnus, for becoming the President of the Canadian Institute of Actuaries for 2018/2019.

In April, the Canadian Institute of Actuaries (CIA) announced that John Dark would become their president during 2018/2019.

John's achievement will make him the third president in a row from the University of Waterloo.  Dave Dickson is the current president (2016/2017), he will be succeeded by Sharon Giffen later this year for 2017/2018 term, and John Dark will take over next year.

1. May 25, 2017Department Seminar by Paul Garthwaite, the Open University

‘Tweaking’ variables to make them uncorrelated

Interpreting the results of a statistical analysis would be easier if all variables were uncorrelated and all data sets consisted of orthogonal x-variables. Principal components is one way of obtaining orthogonal/uncorrelated variables, but the relationship between the principal components and the original x-variables is complex.

All upcoming events

## Surya Banerjee

Lecturer

Contact Information:
Surya Banerjee

Research interests

Statistics, game theory, development economics, and economic theory.