Optimisation and Data Analytics

Entry requirements

A degree with an overall mid 2.2 in one of the following subjects: Mathematics, Statistics, Operational research, Finance, Economics, Business Engineering, Computing, Biology, Physics or Chemistry.

Will consider applicants with a unrelated degree but which contained at least three modules in calculus, algebra, differential equations, probability & statistics, optimisation or other mathematical modules.

Applications from students with a 2:2 or equivalent will be considered dependent on any relevant professional or voluntary experience, previous modules studied and/or personal statement.

Months of entry

October

Course content

Businesses, organisations, and individuals all strive to work as effectively as possible. Operational research uses advanced statistical and analytical methods to help improve the complex decision-making processes to deliver a product or service. Working in this field, you might be identifying future needs for a business, evaluating the time-life value of a customer, or carrying out computer simulations for airlines.

Our MSc Optimisation and Data Analytics will appeal if your first degree included mathematics as its major subject, and we expect you to have prior knowledge of statistics – for example significance testing or basic statistical distributions – and operational research such as linear programming.

Postgraduate Diplomas last for six to nine months (full-time) and include the modules and assessed work of a Masters, without a dissertation. This allows you to proceed to a Masters in mathematics if your undergraduate degree was in a different subject.

You specialise in areas including:

• Continuous and discrete optimisation
• Time series econometrics
• Heuristic computation
• Experimental design
• Machine learning
• Linear models

Our interdisciplinary research recognises that mathematics, including what can be very abstract mathematics, is an essential part of research in many other disciplines.

Our Department of Mathematical Sciences has an international reputation in many areas including semi-group theory, optimisation, probability, applied statistics, bioinformatics and mathematical biology.