The University teaching year ranges from mid-late February to the end of November. The teaching period is broken into two 13-week semesters. Most papers are offered in a single semester. The Department of Mathematics and Statistics Mathematics has been taught at the University of Otago since 1870, while statistics teaching is more recent, the first Professor of Mathematical Statistics having been appointed in 1962. A full range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses are offered, primarily within the Division of Sciences.
Supervision is provided for MSc, MA or PhD degrees by thesis.
Some 18 postgraduate students are enrolled in the year 2000 for honours, diplomas or masters, and 16 for PhD degrees. Students have access to the department's personal computers and workstations in addition to the University's central systems. Current statistical research interests in the department are primarily in the area of environmental and ecological statistics, with close collaboration maintained with the Departments of Zoology, Botany and Marine Science and relevant Crown Research Institutes. Research is also done on time series and various other topics in applied statistics. In mathematics the department has active research groups in polar marine physics and modelling, applied continuum mechanics, numerical methods, mathematics education, algebra including graph theory, and complex analysis.