The Department of Statistical Sciences at the University of Cape Town was established in 1965 as the Department of Mathematical Statistics, and assumed its current name at the beginning of 1991.

In terms of its own mission and that of the University of Cape Town, the department is committed to the development of the statistical sciences within and beyond the university. In its teaching, the department recognises that there are needs both to train professionals in the statistical sciences, and to provide quantitative and decision-making skills to students in other disciplines. In its research, the department seeks to maintain a balance between the development of theory and applications of that theory, and a balance between research of a general nature (for example, outliers in regression analysis), and research with a specifically African context (such as national water resources planning and the study of migratory patterns of the African penguin).

The department is responsible for teaching 17 undergraduate courses. Numbers in the introductory statistics courses, taken mainly by students from the Faculties of Commerce, Science, and Engineering, exceed 1400 students, well over 50% of the University's annual first-year intake. The department is involved in the UCT Academic Development Programme for disadvantaged students and provides additional teaching programmes for first-year BCom students identified as having potential. About 100 students take the third-year level statistics courses in the Science Faculty stream, and about 80 take the third-year level courses in the Commerce Faculty stream. The number of Honours students is around twenty per year, and at any one time there are 15 to 20 masters and doctoral students. The courses offered by the department are recognized by the Institute of Actuaries, and a substantial proportion of our graduates are absorbed by insurance companies. In broad terms, the research within the department covers mathematical statistics, operations research and management science, biostatistics, finance and econometrics. The research of the department is a blend of both theory and applications, and about 30 papers per year are published in a broad spectrum of statistical journals, as well as the journals of a wide range of disciplines.

There is a weekly research seminar during term time: attendance, drawn from staff in the department as well as from other statistical research groups near Cape Town and interested parties from within UCT, averages about 25.

See also Research and Staff.