Stats Advice

Statistics support is offered to:

  • Undergraduates (excluding Honours Statistics students)
  • All Postgraduate Taught students

If you are unsure about the level of Stats support available for your course, please email George.Vazanellis@glasgow.ac.uk.

"Make more people aware of the service! It is a fantastic resource!"

1:1 Stats Appointment - PGT MVLS Student, 2024.

"The one on one teaching provided by Dr Vazanellis has been invaluable. Dr Vazanellis is passionate and enthusiastic about statistics and R, and inculcates the same enthusiasm in his students. He is both attentive and supportive, and tailors his sessions to meet the individual needs of his students. As someone who did not previously use R, my skills have improved significantly through these teaching sessions."

1:1 Stats Appointment - PGR Student.

"Thank you so much for all of your help this year! I wouldn’t have been able to make the prettiest graphs, pass statistics or get a First class in my dissertation without you! Thanks for everything!"

1:1 Stats Appointment - UG MVLS Student, 2024.

"Cannot thank the staff and tutor enough for their help. Very friendly, always makes time for you and explains things in a way that are easy to understand. Very enthusiastic too."

1:1 Stats Appointment - UG MVLS Student, 2025.

"I must first say that the stats class today at St Andrew was very insightful. My specific take home is that the mean tilts towards the skewed or longer tail. That's alongside with some other things that come like a speedy hack to me."

Intro to Statistics Class - Social Sciences Student, 2025.

"I got a B on my resit! Thank you for all of your help, I really appreciate everything you did for me. It helped me so much, you're amazing!"

1:1 Stats Appointment - UG CoSE Student, 2025.

Live Classes (Semester 1)

Introduction to Statistics (for any UofG Student)

This series is for any student who will be working with data as part of their assignments, project, or dissertation. It will cover some fundamental concepts in statistics as well as how to use R Studio, a widely used statistical environment, to perform and present analyses. This particular course will be led by the Statistics Adviser.

> Moodle page for this series (includes slides) - https://moodle.gla.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=19841

Date & TimeTitleDescriptionVenue

Wed 1st Oct
13:00 - 14:00

 Introduction to R - Part 1 This first session introduces some of the basic functionality of R Studio. Bring your laptop with you to follow along! Rankine Building: 107 LT
Wed 8th Oct
13:00 - 14:00		 Introduction to R - Part 2 In the second session of this series, we will become more comfortable with R Studio and use it to create impactful graphs and predictive models. Rankine Building: 107 LT
Wed 15th Oct
13:00 - 14:00		 Descriptive Statistics The third session in this series looks at what information we can draw immediately from our data, while still painting a more complete picture than a simple average. We will cover measures of central tendencies, dispersion, and position. Rankine Building: 107 LT
Wed 22nd Oct
13:00 - 14:00		 Probabilty To certainly give students a better chance of answering the question "how likely was that?", our fourth session covers the basic rules of probability, as well as both discrete and continuous probability distributions. Rankine Building: 107 LT
Wed 29th Oct
13:00 - 14:00		 Hypothesis Testing This fifth session will cover hypothesis testing, which is used to draw conclusions about a whole population from a sample of data, e.g. how can news outlets call an election with only a fraction of the votes tallied? We will discuss how to choose the null and alternative hypothesis, and which distributions to use. Rankine Building: 107 LT
Wed 5th Nov
13:00 - 14:00		 Simple and Multiple Linear Regression This sixth session will discuss the relationship, or more precisely the correlation, between variables, and how to describe these relationships using simple and multiple linear regression. We will use R to generate a best fit line to pairwise ordered data, and then also generate a more complex linear model. Rankine Building: 107 LT
Wed 12th Nov
13:00 - 14:00		 Logistic and Multinomial Regression Does the amount of time a student spends studying increase the probability of passing their course, and if so, what’s my probability of passing if I spend x hours studying? This session will show how this can be answered using logistic regression, and how this can be implemented in R. Rankine Building: 107 LT
Wed 19th Nov
13:00 - 14:00		 Flexible Regression Sometimes a linear model won’t be appropriate to model the data we have and we have to instead use a flexible yet smooth curve. The last of our sessions will show how to create a flexible regression model using the R package “mgcv”. Rankine Building: 107 LT
 
 

Stats Drop-Ins (for any UofG student)

> Moodle page for Stats advice - https://moodle.gla.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=42233

DateTimeVenueDescription
Fri 10th Oct 10:00-11:00 All in James McCune Smith Learning Hub: 429

Open to students with any statistics question (other than Honours level statistics courses). Come in for help with theory or issues with statistical software.

No booking required.
Fri 24th Nov 10:00-11:00
Fri 7th Nov 10:00-11:00
Fri 21st Nov 10:00-11:00

 

Pre-recorded Classes and Online Materials

These Moodle pages offer a mix of online materials and resources you can work through at your own pace. Some are classes held in the previous semester, which may have recordings available. Check back regularly for updates.

SLD Stats Support Moodle

This page has a range of resources on probability and statistics for students from any subject background:

SLD Stats Support Moodle

Appointments

Note: you will require a GUID to use the appointment booking system. If no appointments are available, check back after a few days as new appointments are added weekly.

A view of the main building from the library during sunrise

Other SLD Advisers

Dr George Vazanellis

George is the Statistics Adviser working within SLD. He has a PhD in Statistics from the University of Glasgow.

He offers 1:1 appointments and other group teaching activities throughout the academic year.

Teaching Requests

George can provide statistics support to undergraduate and postgraduate taught degrees across all colleges. To find out what teaching he can offer your course, please get in touch by email.

For individual students looking for help, please feel free to book a one-to-one appointment.

George.Vazanellis@glasgow.ac.uk

Room 315
McMillan Reading Room
University Avenue
G12 8QF