History &
General Information

location

computing

 library

the region

History
 
 
Through the vision of Gertrude Cox, the Department of Statistics, in the College of Arts and Sciences, was organized in 1946 with Harold Hotelling as its first chairman. Since 1948, over 200 Ph.D. degrees in Statistics have been awarded. Our graduates have assumed leadership positions in many important statistical organizations, and as chairs of several Departments of Statistics here and abroad. Many professors at leading universities, and senior statisticians in government and industry, received their doctoral training in the Department of Statistics at Chapel Hill.

Much fundamental work in experimental design, coding theory, nonparametric inference, estimation and hypothesis testing, sequential analysis, renewal theory, and stochastic processes has originated here. Together with the Department of Biostatistics at Chapel Hill and the Department of Statistics at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, the department publishes the Institute of Statistics Mimeo Series, which now includes over 2,300 titles, and contains the first results of many of the fundamental lines of research in mathematical statistics as it exists today.
 
 

Department Location
 
 
The Department is now located primarily in New West on Cameron Avenue, but Emeritus Faculty and about half of our graduate students have offices on the first floor of Smith Building. All graduate students are provided with office space which are shared with one or two fellow students and are equipped with networked computers.

 Directions to the Department are located here. Those wishing to visit the campus should be aware that on-campus parking is scarce, and that contacting Mary Hinrichs (mhinrich@email.unc.edu) prior to their visits is definitely recommended. Faculty and staff can find the department's procedures for allocation of internal parking permits here.
 
 

Computing
 
 
A departmental network of Sun Sparc stations provides the opportunity for advanced computing in a Unix environment. The Graduate Student Computer Labs have 9 PC's 4 Sun Sparc 4s and 5 Sun workstations. Through the UNC Academic Technology and Networks there is access to the campus mainframe, IBM 3090-170 computer, the VAX 6620 computer, a Convex C3840 mid range supercomputer with emass data tower mass storage device; the North Carolina Supercomputing Center's CRAY Y-MPS/432 supercomputer located in the Research Triangle Park and accessed through the high speed North Carolina Research Education Network, NC-REN,and the National Science Foundation supercomputers at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center and the Cornell National Supercomputer Facility.
Library
 
 
The Brauer Library, which serves the departments of Computer Science, Mathematics, Operations Research, Physics, and Statistics, is located in Phillips Hall and maintains a collection of over 90,000 volumes, 2,000 microfiche, 1,000 technical reports, and about 1,000 current journal subscriptions. The library's research collection in statistics and probability is excellent. 
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North Carolina

Chapel Hill

      Chapel Hill can be at once invigorating and serene, contemporary and old-fashioned. Since its founding 200 years ago, Chapel Hill's progressive spirit has grown with the times. It is named after the New Hope Chapel which stood upon a hill at the crossing of two dirt roads where the Carolina Inn now stands. Legend holds that the location of Chapel Hill and the university were decided one day in 1792 when a group charged with picking a site for the state's university took a break from the search to relax in the shade of a tulip poplar near the chapel. Impressed with the location, it was selected as the site and, in 1793 work began on constructing the first building of the university. Although it still calls itself a town, and some residents think of it as a village, Chapel Hill is a bustling community, the largest in Orange county, and affectionately known as the Southern Part of Heaven. There are now 45,000 residents and a dazzling array of cultural and sporting activities. From Chapel Hill there is easy access to the Appalachian Mountains in the western part of the state with abundant trails, ski slopes, folk art, and music, and to the Coast with its beautiful beaches and historic areas including New Bern, Kitty Hawk,Okracoke, and Wilmington.
 

Research Triangle Park
 

     Research Triangle Park, set in sixty-eight hundred acres of pinelands, is the largest among the 115 university-related research parks in the United States. Over 34,000 people work in the park for the 55 companies and institutions there, which include IBM, Bell Northern, Glaxo-Wellcome, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Research Triangle Institute, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the National Institute of Statistical Sciences, and the National Humanities Center. SAS Institute is located nearby in Cary, NC. The wide spectrum of fields includes telecommunications, environmental sciences, pharmaceuticals, microelectronics, biotechnology, chemistry,toxicology, and statistics.