Simon White
I am a Postgraduate Researcher (PhD) in Statistics at the University of Nottingham's School of Mathematical Sciences (UK). My supervisors is Professor Philip O'Neill
Academic Homepage
Contact Details
| Email Address | Email (Work): pmxsw [at] nottingham.ac.uk Email (Personal): simon.white [at] 3-14.co.uk |
| Office | C3a Pope Building |
| Address |
School of Mathematical Sciences University of Nottingham University Park Nottingham, NG7 2RD UK |
| Telephone (Personal): | +44 (0) 115 84 66980 |
| Telephone (School): | +44 (0) 115 951 4949 |
Research Details
Areas of Interest
Currently my research is focused on Epidemics conditioned on their final outcome. It is focus in Bayesian Inference using primarily Markov Chain Monte Carlo Methods.
Analysing epidemics that have occurred is difficult with limited information about the disease and other factors of the situation. We approach the problem by considering final size data, generally commonly reported, as well as extending to include information on social groupings and interactions.
Using this limited information, and making restrictive assumptions about the mechanism of infectivity and spread of the disease, we make inference about the parameters of the model. There are several limitations to this method, not least its reliance on specified model assumptions and simplifications. Also, the technique used does not allow for any temporal information to be incorporated - a significant area of current research.
Reports and Papers
- Internal Research Report (Second Year Report)
Conferences and Workshops
- Royal Statistical Society Conference, September 2008 (University of Nottingham): Chaired the session of invited speakers from the RSC 2008.
- Research Student's Conference in Probability and Statistics, March 2008 (University of Nottingham): Head Organiser, giving the openning and closing address.
- Mathematics in the Plant Sciences Study Group (MPSSG), December 2007 (University of Nottingham, organised jointly by CPIB and GARNet): Contributed to the problem of "Measuring genetic diversity?" presented by Pete Iannetta of the Scottish Crop Research Institute (SCRI).
- Research Student's Conference in Probability and Statistics, March 2007 (Durham University): Presented a talk.
- Workshop: Inference for partially observed diffusion processes, January 2007 (University of Warwick)
- Research Student's Conference in Probability and Statistics, March 2006 (Glasgow University)
Committees and Positions
Researchers Student Conference in Statistics 2008
I was the head organiser for RSC 2008, held in Nottingham on 31st March to 3rd April. This is the UK's largest Student Researcher Conference in Probability and Statistics.
(School of Mathematical Sciences) Research Committee
I was the Postgrad Researcher's representative on the School Research Committee (2006/7 and 2007/8), dealing with matters relating to research within the school.
Graduate School
I am a tutor for the University of Nottingham Graduate School, teaching the Introduction to Quantitative Research Methods, an introductory course to statistics as a whole. It is a two day course covering a wide range of topics.
I also demonstrate for LaTeX for Researchers, a course to help people learn LaTeX.
Skills
| Mathematical Software: | Maple, MATLAB (Octave), S-Plus (R) Very specific packages, but widely applicable experience from using them. |
| Programming/Scripting Languages: | C (extensively used for my research), Perl, PHP, Bash My programming skill is both for hobby websites and serious research applications. |
| Applications: | LaTeX, Office (OpenOffice), MySQL (PostgreSQL, SQLite) A range of database backends and standard presentation and report writing software. |
Personal Interests
I organise a weekly football game for the department, very friendly, indoors, as player and referee it's surprising how often my team wins.
I spend my free time playing board games and roleplaying games, for the past three years (2006-2008) I ran the Wargames section of the Univeristy of Nottingham Roleplaying Games Society (UoN RPGSoc). During that time I organised many internal events and put teams together to play in external competitions for wargaming; as well as running and playing in many rpg games.
I enjoy watching a variety of films, from David Cronenberg's 'Videodrome' to Ingmar Bergman's 'Seventh Seal' via Steven Spielberg's 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind'. The animated films by Studio Ghibli are also among my favourites.