Department of Statistics
Software development
Software development is an important part of our research and teaching activities. Activities range from a few short lines to automate a few tests or software to help teach, to more extensive simulations and fully featured statistical suites.
Statistical programming language R is our best-known product. The R Project, first developed by Ross Ihaka and Robert Gentleman, is now used daily by thousands of people worldwide and being maintained by a cast of hundreds.
The R software is easily extended with packages, which may be found on [CRAN]. Within our Department we have developed a number of these packages.
The Comprehensive R Archive Network
R packages we have developed
Work on genetics requires sophisticated software to answer questions quickly. PhyML, a software that estimates maximum likelihood phylogenies from alignments of nucleotide or amino acid sequences, was written by Stéphane Guindon and Olivier Gascuel.
PhyML = http://code.google.com/p/phyml/
PhyTime is an addition to PhyML that estimates divergence times using a fast Bayesian approach. It can be run online from Stéphane Guindon’s website.
Schools benefit from the curriculum and software we have helped develop as part of CensusAtSchool New Zealand and from the work done by our statistical education researchers.
Sophisticated software, powered by the R language and environment for statistical computing, allows investigation of data through a web browser. Similar software is very expensive; we provide it for free to anyone with an internet connection. Because it runs via the web there is no need to install anything.
Find more information about CensusAtSchool New Zealand
The next big project we are working on is iNZight. The software is built on R and allows drag-n-drop analysis of data, both from CensusAtSchool of from your own data collection.
The University of Auckland rodent invasion research group is a loosely knit collection of researchers focusing on the dynamics of rodent distribution and invasion throughout New Zealand and its offshore islands.
The group is involved in a number of projects investigating the rate of invasion of offshore islands by rats and the behaviour of individuals as they invade islands. For this the group uses a combination of ecological, genetic and statistical methods. The Rodent Invasion Project was set up by James Russell, Rachel Fewster and Steven Miller.
