Plagiarism defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as “To take and use as one’s own the thoughts writings or inventions of another” is unfortunately a growing problem in Higher Education (HE) institutions. Within the Mathematics Statistics and Operational Research (MSOR) disciplines it occurs most frequently in “take-home” assignments whether group or individual where the main form is collusion or copying and in third year projects where students can use the internet and other sources.
In Statistics it is important to allow students opportunities to analyse data and present a report on their findings in written and/or oral form. This is appropriate in exploratory data analysis and in statistical modelling and therefore features in both service and specialist courses. Despite the plagiarism issues involved with such coursework students would be disadvantaged if these elements which reflect the applied nature of the discipline were not included in their assessed work.
