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| Sunday, 9 October 2005 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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Industrial Statistics and
Mathematical Finance :
A new degree from University of Colombo by D. R. Weerasekera PHD, University of Colombo, Head Dept. of Statistics. With the national demand to introduce degree programs with high employability in Sri Lanka, the Chairman of the University Grants Commission, Prof. B. B. R. R. N. Mendis has convinced Sri Lankan Universities to design many such programs. The new program on "Industrial Statistics and Mathematical Finance" to be launched in June 2006 at the Faculty of Science, Colombo University is one of them. This program will be conducted jointly by the two departments. Dept. of Statistics and the Dept. of Mathematics of the Faculty. Sixty new entrants from the Physical Science stream will be enroled to a new Degree program. 'Industrial Statistics and Mathematical Finance' in June 2006 at the Colombo University. This program will be run jointly by the two departments, Statistics and Mathematics of the Science faculty. It is first and the only bachelor degree program that combines Industrial Statistics, Financial Mathematics, Management Science and Computer Science. It is expected that these students could be directly employable in majority of the industrial and financial institutions. This program is conducted only in the English medium. One special feature of the program is that the students undergo an industrial training, where the student gets the opportunity to study the functions of an organisation, and also use their knowledge to solve a problem that is identified by the industry. The benefit is mutual as the industry could get their problems solved while the students could gain an excellent experience in real life applications. The course will be mainly lab-based where each student will have to do weekly practical assignments. During the first two years of the program, all 60 students will gain knowledge to use statistical and mathematical software. The course emphasises practical work involving real data analysis which would give the students a measure of confidence in handling real-life situations. Thus, two fully equipped computer labs, one for 'Industrial Statistics' and the other for 'Mathematical Finance' will be provided. Each lab will have 60 powerful computers and all lectures will be conducted interactively with a computer for each student. The students who perform well at the end of the second year could follow one of the following two special degree programs leading to four years of study: Industrial Statistics, Mathematical Finance. Those students who follow a special degree program will choose relevant subject courses, and in the final year, they will have to produce a project report on a topic, most probably chosen from the industry. These students will be trained to write up a quality report and presenting their findings. They will also be encouraged to use modern multimedia facilities for their presentations. This component is mainly aimed at developing the student's communications skills which compliments the employability of these graduates. It is expected that there will be excellent job opportunities for graduates who follow this degree program. These graduates, depending on their choice, could either go to the statistics field or to the financial mathematics field. Statistics graduates are needed for various industries as market researchers (identifying market opportunities, testing consumer perceptions and the effectiveness of advertising, and predicating market trends.), management scientists (finding how to make the most effective use of limited resources, e. g. stock control strategies for supermarkets, scheduling shifts and duties, determining the number of tellers to have operating in a bank), quality managers (improving the quality of products and services in business and industry), and econometrician (investigating the economy at all levels from individual businesses through to national economies). Apart from these, some of the other industries where statisticians play an important role are garments, tourism and manufacturing. In all of these jobs, these statisticians are designing studies, analyzing data, making projections and helping to make decisions. There are many opportunities for those who want to become financial mathematicians as well. The finance and insurance industries of Sri Lanka are today facing an acute shortage of professionals who have the necessary advanced knowledge needed for computational and mathematical finance as well as actuarial science. The following examples will illustrate the rationale for the introduction of mathematical finance for the degree program. 1. There are 13 insurance companies in Sri Lanka that are facing a shortage of actuarial professionals. Over 80% of the existing actuarial professionals are products of the Departments of mathematics and statistics. The proposed degree will produce enough graduates to cater to the present shortage of Actuarial professionals. The option market has already arrived in Sri Lanka and is facing a crisis that has resulted from a severe shortage of graduates with the mathematical expertise needed to solve many problems. Such computations cannot be done by others and require well-trained mathematicians with computational expertise. A result of this is that the Sri Lankan share market is struggling to introduce options to the stock exchange and the proposed degree will inject much needed expertise to Sri Lanka's financial sector. Some of the cutting edge research in finance in areas such as portfolio optimisation, long term interest rate prediction and the development of fund management tools are beyond most traditional financial professionals in the market because of the lack of advanced mathematical skills. **** Objectives * To produce effective graduates who could easily cater to the needs of the Industry and financial sectors in demand and be directly employable by most industrial and financial sectors. * To provide students with necessary statistical and mathematical background and the computational skills to perform industry level computations. * To inject the currently missing mathematical expertise into Sri Lanka's finance sector to perform complex analytical computations which are currently not possible. * To provide more opportunities for students to interact with the industry through industrial training placements. * To encourage students to undertake and solve real life problems of the industry through their research projects. |
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