Introducing Nikola Surjanovic of the Department of Statistics!

Name: Nikola Surjanovic
Major: Statistics
Year: Second
Supervisor: Dr. Thomas Loughin

Q: What do you want to be when you grow up?
A: I hope to become a professor in the future. I am enthusiastic about teaching others, and I also feel that I will enjoy research.

Q: What will you be working on this summer?
A: In order to detect if a model is a poor fit for given data, there are various “Goodness-of-fit” tests, which help in this process. The Hosmer-Lemeshow test is often used for logistic regression models, and it is desirable to know whether a similar test would work for Poisson regression models. To analyze this, a simulation study will be conducted.
Essentially, for people not taking statistics courses, I will be trying to find out whether one test can work in another scenario. If so, some questions that should be answered are: under what conditions will the test work, and how well does it perform?

Q: What’s your favorite course that you have taken so far?
A: One of my favourite courses, which I took in this spring semester, is STAT 240 – Introduction to Data Science. It’s a new course and exposes students to modern tools for data acquisition. I would highly recommend it to anyone who will ever be dealing with data on a regular basis (who won’t?). There are some very basic prerequisites.
More info here.

Q: What’s a science joke or meme from your field?