Rachel Harter was inspired to study statistics during an internship at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Being an academic was not her calling, so she jumped at the chance to work as a survey statistician. Now she oversees the statistical work on RTI’s largest survey project.
A Statistician's Life
Tian Zheng
Tian Zheng grew up in Beijing, China, and her interest in statistics stemmed from her keen curiosity in complex patterns and trends in natural and social phenomena. Currently, she works in machine learning, spatiotemporal modeling, image analysis, and social network analysis and earned the Outstanding Statistical Application Award in 2008.
Mine Çetinkaya-Rundel
Mine—who is originally from Istanbul, Turkey—works on the OpenIntro project, whose mission is to make educational products that are free and transparent and to lower barriers to education.
Jessica Utts
Jessica Utts developed a love of teaching and a passion for promoting statistical literacy during her graduate years at Penn State. Watching her sister and mother struggle through formula-based statistics courses prompted her to write two literacy-based textbooks: Seeing Through Statistics and Mind on Statistics. She has won awards for outstanding teaching and has served in a variety of leadership positions.
Francesca Dominici
Francesca Dominici always loved mathematics and probability, but statistics was love at first sight because she could become an expert in different fields as long as there was data. Her studies have directly and routinely affected air quality policy and led to more stringent ambient air quality standards in the United States. For her contributions, she has earned the Janet Norwood Award for Outstanding Achievement by a Woman in the Statistical Sciences.
Beth Chance
Beth Chance always had a talent for mathematics and a love for human learning, but was never sure what she could “do” with them. Eventually, she discovered she could teach statistics and make it as applicable as possible to anyone who will listen. This past year, she received the Text and Academic Authors Association Award for Most Promising New Textbook.
Monica Jackson
Monica Jackson began her research career when she was an undergraduate student at Clark Atlanta University. Since then, she has, as a spatial statistician, worked on applying her spatial techniques to a wide variety of medical problems. Now she is invested in developing research programs for undergraduate students.
Frauke Kreuter
Frauke Kreuter grew up in Heidelberg, Germany, and has had a passion for math and statistics from early on. As a statistician, she has leadership roles in multiple institutions—including on several continents. She makes all these positions work through wonderful teams and partnerships.
Marie Davidian
Having received very theoretical training at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Davidian learned through “trial by fire” how to be an effective applied statistician-collaborator. Her first book, Nonlinear Models for Repeated Measurement Data, co-authored with David Giltinan, is considered a seminal text on nonlinear mixed effects modeling and pharmacokinetic analysis.
Q&A With Educators
We interviewed a handful of statistics teachers to find out who inspired them, where they get their best teaching tools, and what they think is the most challenging part of being a teacher.