Statistics student Jiang Jia-Jian’s final year project has been accepted for publication in the October 2015 issue of Statistics & Probability Letters, one of the top international journals in statistics and probability.
His research paper, titled “An Interesting Property of the Arcsine Distribution and Its Applications”, shows that important properties of a discrete approximation to the arcsine distribution, which is constructed by representative points obtained by the number-theoretic method, remain unchanged.
“The result is surprising,” says Mr Jiang’s supervisor Prof Fang Kai-Tai, a world-renowned statistician teaching at UIC. “It’s like when you counterfeit something you get a copy that’s the same as the original in a certain sense.”
The paper’s corresponding author and Programme Director of the Statistics Programme Dr He Ping expanded Mr Jiang’s discovery and did some statistical simulation. Completing the paper together, they then submitted it to the journal.
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| Prof Fang Kai-Tai (5th L), Dr He Ping (7th L), Jiang Jia-Jian (4th L), Lin Ziqi (3rd L) and Liu Sijie (2nd L) at the 24th International Workshop on Matrices and Statistics |
Earlier on 25 May, Prof Fang, Dr He and Mr Jiang were invited to present their research at the 24th International Workshop on Matrices and Statistics, held in Haikou. Another two Year Four students, Lin Ziqi and Liu Sijie, also gave an invited talk on their joint project.
According to Chair of the International Organizing Committee Jeffrey J Hunter, the workshop stimulates research and fosters the interaction of researchers from all over the world in the interface between statistics and matrix theory.
Due to Mr Jiang’s excellent performance, he has been admitted by a master programme at the Australian National University.
Develop students’ research potential
Prof Fang Kai-Tai says he came up with the research idea for using representative points in statistical simulation when he visited Stanford University in 1982.
His students have been exploring his idea via different statistical distributions in the last two years, and Jiang Jia-Jian has found science-worthy results.
Prof Fang says it is not the first time that Statistics students have published papers in scientific journals. “Teachers can develop the potential of students’ final year projects. Students will have a lot of fun and it helps raise the college’s reputation as well.”
2013 graduate Zhang Rong, who is pursuing a PhD degree at the University of Pittsburgh, and Ke Xiao, an MPhil student at HKBU-UIC Joint Institute of Research Studies, published their research related to the uniform designs in the Journal of Complexity, under the guidance of Prof Fang and Dr Ye Huajun.
Zheng Yanxun, also a 2013 graduate and now working in Princeton after receiving a master’s degree from Georgetown University, published her paper on magic squares in Mathematical Culture two years ago.
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| Prof Fang Kai-Tai and Zheng Yanxun. Photo taken in 2013 |
In addition, Luo Yuying, Lin Ziqi and Liu Sijie all had their papers on magic squares recognised during various scientific workshops, published in journals or presented on other occasions.
Encourage students in teachers’ research
“I think our students are creative and show great potential, and I put in a lot of effort to guide them with enthusiasm,” adds Prof Fang.
“In general, undergraduates can hardly do in-depth research. I understand teachers are very busy, and some of them consider it a burden and guide students on final year projects for one semester. I work mostly for two semesters because I hope their creative research projects can be published one day.
“If teachers let students participate in a small part of their research, the youngsters will probably produce a surprising result and will be very happy.”
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| Prof Fang Kai-Tai and the students he guided on their final year projects in 2013, Lin Chaoyu (1st L), Luo Yuying (2nd L), Zheng Yanxun (4th L) and Zhu Wenbin (6th L) |
Prof Fang has his own way to design students’ final year projects. After selecting their topics at the end of the third year, students review references, propose ideas, and open up discussions during one-week long seminars. Prof Fang gives professional advice before they officially undertake their research.
Prof Stephen Chung, Dean of the Division of Science and Technology, praises Prof Fang Kai-Tai for giving an excellent example and reasons why undergraduate students participating in teachers' research projects should be encouraged.
Reporter: Deen He
(from MPRO, with special thanks to the ELC)
