Distance Teaching of Statistics to Undergraduates at the Open University

At the beginning of this academic year February 2002 there were 27 817 registrations on courses run by the Faculty of Mathematics and Computing. This figure includes post-graduate students and students registered in Singapore. Of these 7 055 registrations were for level one entry courses and 1 863 registrations were for level two and level three statistics courses.

The ages of our students range from 18 to those who are over 65. As an example the following chart shows the age profile of students registered on M246 Elements of Statistics for the February 2002 presentation of the course.