About us, Department of Mathematics and Statistics

Why study Mathematics and Statistics at Otago?

The Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Otago is a great place to study:

Our lecturers are world-class researchers, including staff who are fellows of the Royal Society Te Apārangi and Engineering New Zealand. This guarantees dynamic, research-informed teaching.
The integration between Mathematics and Statistics ensures excellent and coordinated combined programmes.
We have a strong reputation in ecology and evolutionary genetics, mathematical and numerical relativity, and computational statistics. These and many others are entry points for student research at Honours, Masters and PhD level.
The Department's unique mathematical and data modelling programme (COMO) trains science students for the data revolution.
We are an integral part of the Data Science programme at Otago.
Academics in Mathematics and Statistics collaborate with many other departments, ensuring teaching is grounded in the use of quantitative methods to address real research questions.
Otago was the first university to teach Mathematics in New Zealand. When founded in 1869 as New Zealand's first university, one of the three initial professors was teaching Mathematics and Natural Philosophy.
Otago is in the top one per cent of universities internationally according to the latest QS World University rankings.

The Department has three basic teaching goals:

To successfully foster the intellectual development of all our students
To support students of other disciplines by providing mathematical or statistical training that adds value to their studies
To provide a supportive and inclusive environment for all students in which the first two goals may be achieved