University of California, Riverside's Statistical Consulting Collaboratory Serves a Multitude of Businesses and Industries

Online, October 13, 2010 (Newswire.com) - Vegetation-destroying pests controlled with the aid of statistics. Soil contamination hot spots targeted through statistical sampling. Software to manage massive computer networks developed with statistical algorithms. The human brain's relationship to hereditary disease studied with the support of statistical analysis.

These are just a few examples of how the fascinating world of statistics benefits our everyday lives and makes our world a better place.

At the center of this innovative work is the Statistical Consulting Collaboratory at the University of California, Riverside (UCR). Since 2003, the Collaboratory has been involved in a multitude of projects, many on the leading edge of science, medicine, high tech, business and academia.

The Collaboratory serves a dual purpose. It provides graduate students in statistics with an environment for collaboration in research and instruction along with the practical experience they need in order to prepare for employment. Further, it offers for reasonable fees to the public and private sectors a broad range of statistical expertise including design of experiments, statistical inference, hypothesis testing, and data modeling.

"We solve problems," emphasizes Daniel Jeske, director of the Collaboratory and a professor of statistics. "We help businesses, governments, nonprofits, and academia make informed decisions by analyzing and modeling the data they've collected, whether it be from customers, surveys, sampling, or other research."

Current or recent clients and the projects in which the students of the Collaboratory assisted include Integrien Corporation's (recently purchased by VMware, Inc.) development of large-scale network monitoring software, the California Dept. of Food and Agriculture's study of the effects of dairy farms on water pollution, Loma Linda University's study of the human brain in relation to Alzheimer's disease, Riverside County (CA) Community Action Partnership's cost-benefit analysis of a program serving the impoverished, and the work of UCR's Dept. of Entomology to manage pests in citrus and avocado groves.

The Collaboratory (http://collaboratory.ucr.edu) was formed under the joint leadership of of Keh-Shin Lii, Professor of Statistics and former chair of the Dept. of Statistics, and Robert Hanneman, Professor of Sociology and former Associate Dean. Jeske, the current chair of the Dept. of Statistics, has been the Collaboratory's director since its inception. He and Associate Director Karen Xu conduct the initial scoping of the client projects and supervise the mostly second- and third-year graduate students who are assigned the work.

For more information on the Statistical Consulting Collaboratory and its role in supporting businesses, please call Daniel Jeske, 951-827-3014.

The University of California, Riverside (www.ucr.edu) is a doctoral research university, a living laboratory for groundbreaking exploration of issues critical to Inland Southern California, the state and communities around the world. The campus is planning a medical school and has reached the heart of the Coachella Valley by way of the UCR Palm Desert Graduate Center. The campus has an annual statewide economic impact of more than $1 billion.