Rate My Professor Austina Clark

Dr. Austina Clark serves as a lecturer in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand. Her academic work centers on statistics, with a particular emphasis on ecological and biological applications. Clark's PhD thesis focused on 'Spatial designs for field experiments,' reflecting her interest in experimental design. She has developed methodologies for handling messy and incomplete data, planning appropriate statistical designs for field studies. Notable research contributions include estimating species richness, predicting unseen species, and comparing species similarity using various models, as presented in her talk at the New Zealand Statistical Association conference in 2009. She collaborated on studies involving plant species data collected in New Zealand, employing models to estimate population sizes.

In addition to research, Clark plays a key role in teaching and student support within the department. She offers special assistance to students whose primary language is not English, aiding their success in mathematics and statistics courses. Her educational efforts extend to creating practical resources for learning statistics, such as the cockles data analysis lesson based on her research with Fred Lam, which demonstrates stratified sampling, confidence intervals, and hypothesis tests on real-world data. Clark has also contributed to video-based teaching materials that use motivational videos and authentic datasets to engage students in statistical concepts. Key publications encompass 'Establishing baseline data: Using institutional data to learn more about completion factors at one New Zealand university' (2009), which examines demographic and study-related factors influencing degree completion; 'Modelling count and growth data with many zeros' (2008); 'Estimation of the Size of an Open Population Using Local Estimating Equations II: A Partially Parametric Approach' (2003); and 'Teaching students to use the chi-square test when observations are dependent.' Her scholarship is documented on ResearchGate with 21 citations across four publications. In 2021, Clark generously donated to establish the John Clark Memorial Prize at the University of Otago, commemorating her late husband, Associate Professor John Clark, and supporting mathematics initiatives. She has shared her expertise through international seminars, including at Peking University.