Phil Darby
Lecturer in Statistics
School of Accounting, Economics and Statistics
Contact details
Room: 3/37, Craiglockhart Campus
Tel: +44 (0) 131 455 4360
Email: p.darby@napier.ac.uk
Qualifications
BSc – physics, University of Bristol 1977
Meng – solid state electronics, University of Sheffield 1978
MSc – applied statistics, Napier University 2000
Areas of Expertise
Computing for statistics, analysis of large data sets, data mining, multivariate statistics, market analysis, forecasting.
Brief Biography
I became a statistician after spending 20 years in the semiconductor industry in several multinational companies as an engineer, manager and consultant. Data analysis was a constant theme so I was drawn towards applied statistics when the opportunity arose. I retrained at Edinburgh Napier but have never managed to move on. My interest is held by a range of teaching, consulting and research activities. I am registered on an MPhil (a stepping stone to a PhD) on “The evaluation of fleet road safety interventions” with the support of two companies. One of these is a household name that operates a large fleet of vehicles.
Key Research Activities
I have a variety of interests in the area of road traffic accidents analysis. These include interactions with population aging, policing policy and analysis of company fleet safety data.
A second strand of research concerns the determinants of news release by FTSE listed companies and am working on an ICAS project in collaboration with researchers at Heriot-Watt University.
I have also contributed significant work to the brand narrative for destinations case study of the UCI Mountain Bike World Cup, Fort William.
Recent Publications
Darby, P., Ison, S. and Raeside, R. (2010) Evaluation of fleet safety interventions. Proceedings of the 42nd Universities Transport Study Group conference, Plymouth, UK.
Darby, P., Raeside, R. and Murray, W. (2009) Applying online fleet driver assessment to help identify, target and reduce occupational road safety risks. Safety Science 47, pp. 436-442
Robertson, M. and Darby, P (2007) The Rurban interface ~ investigating the potency of niche sport events as brand narrative for destinations: Case study - UCI Mountain Bike World Cup, Fort William, Scotland, Proceedings of the ‘4th International Event Research Conference’ Melbourne, Australia 12th July 2007.
Knowledge Transfer Projects
I am leading the KTP on the provision of statistical training to the finance industry.