Department of Mathematics and Statistics
Welcome to the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the Open University
Head of Department: Dr. Toby O'Neil
You can study our modules in Mathematics and Statistics part-time at home by supported Distance Teaching. We are Europe's largest provider of university-level education in Mathematics and Statistics and provide modules for approximately 80% of the part-time Mathematics and Statistics students in the UK. Our expanding MSc programme caters for more than 25% of students who do part-time postgraduate study in Mathematics. In national Student Satisfaction Surveys Open University students were amongst the most satisfied with their modules and OU Mathematics students were some of the most satisfied Mathematics students.
The Department
The Department of Mathematics and Statistics is part of the Faculty of Mathematics, Computing and Technology, and comprises over 30 central academic members of staff and 15 academic staff based at regional centres around the UK. It is also home for a number of research fellows, visiting researchers and both full-time and part-time research students.
Research and Seminars
The Department has an active research programme with regular seminars, workshops and conferences, including a seminar series in statistics. The main interests for both teaching and research currently lie in the areas of analysis, combinatorics, history of mathematics, mathematical physics, mathematics education and statistics.
Advancing Women's Careers
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The Department is proud to support the Good Practice Award - Advancing women's careers in university mathematical sciences departments. |
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22 May 2012 Convex polytopes and intersection homologyAbstract: The problem is this: What are the possible values of the number of vertices, edges, faces, etc on a convex polytope? The talk has three parts. First, the statement of the problem, and its ... 24 May 2012 Pell's equation, Galois' dual continued fractions, and attracting fixed pointsAbstract: Each quadratic irrational has a pre-periodic continued fraction expansion, and each pre-periodic continued fraction converges to a quadratic irrational. The standard proofs are by recurrenc... 29 May 2012 A Linear Empirical Greenhouse ModelBecause of large uncertainties in mechanistic models used to predict the mean global surface temperature, T, and in box models used to predict the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, c, it is hi... 13 June 2012 Lyness Cycles, Elliptic Curves, and Hikorski TriplesAbstract: The heart of this thesis is an exploration of a new triple of natural numbers, (a, b, (ab+1)/(a+b) ). These Hikorski Triples (or HTs) arise from a simple yet evocative mathematical situation... 26 June 2012 Managing uncertainty in future energy systemsAbstract: We discuss some of the mathematical, statistical and economic challenges arising in the management and control of future energy systems. Problems of interest include the prediction and inte... |