Level: BSc, MSci
Title: Inference for circular data
Supervisor:

Dr Lawrence Pettit
Research Area: Probability and Applications [Including Statistics]
Description:

Data consisting of angles on a circle can arise in many areas of application. The von Mises distribution is often used to model such data. Methods have been proposed to make inferences about the parameters of the von Mises distribution. The book by Mardia [3] gives an introduction to this area. Collett [2] gives classical methods for detecting outliers in circular data. In this project the first aim is to review and explain these methods. A second aim would be to apply these methods to data simulated from a von Mises distribution (see [1]). An MSci student could also look at other distributions used to model such data, for example the wrapped normal distribution.

  1. D.J. Best, N.I. Fisher, Efficient simulation of the von Mises distribution, Applied Statistics 28 (1979): 152–157.
  2. D. Collett, Outliers in circular data, Applied Statistics 29 (1980): 50-57.
  3. K.V. Mardia, Statistics of directional data. Academic Press, London, 1972.
Further Reading:
Key Modules:

MTH5122 Statistical Methods

MTH6136 Statistical Theory (useful for MSci students)
Other Information:
Current Availability: Yes