Welcome to my website! My name is Kristína. I come from Slovakia, but I have spent the last six years studying in the UK.
This October I joined the Statistics and Operational Research (STOR-i) CDT programme and I would like to share with you what I have been doing so far in my MRes year.
The first six weeks were quite intense. We had a lot of lectures, workshops, and assignments from four different modules – Probability and Stochastic Processes, Inference and Modelling, Stochastic Simulation, and Deterministic Optimisation. Since I come from a Physics background, a lot of the things were completely new to me. Despite there being a lot of things, it was a very exciting time. I have learned so much in such a short time!
The last four weeks of the semester we took part in the Contemporary Topic Sprints. Every Monday we would attend a 2-3 hour lecture on a certain topic. At the end of the lecture, we would be split into two groups and given a set of instructions or guidelines on what to read about, code up, etc. On Thursday afternoon, we would give a presentation on what we learned and the work conducted during the week.
The topics we covered in the sprints were Optimisation under Uncertainty, Computational Statistics – Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC), Modelling Paradigms for Complex and Novel Data Forms – Changepoints, and Statistical Learning for Decision. Honestly, I can’t choose my favourite week. All of them were so interesting and there was a lot to look into. Many of the things had to be included in the future research because there was simply not enough time to cover it all! Luckily, we each get to choose one of the topics to go into a little bit more depth in our individual report.
That’s all from me in this blog. Stay tuned for more updates from my MRes year!