Biography

I am a senior lecturer in the Department of Statistics at Harvard University. Before that, I was an associate professor of statistics at Reed College. I teach courses across the curriculum but most recently taught Intro Stats, a modern introductory course that introduces students to the whole data analysis workflow, and Data Science where students develop their data acumen and write blog posts about their data work.

I am also a survey statistician who develops estimation techniques that combine complex survey data with big data sources. Whether it’s to estimate official statistics, related to canopy cover or occupational statistics, or to assess the impact of voter ID laws, I enjoy creating methods to learn from data. I am a big fan of the statistical software, R, and have written two R packages: mase for model-assisted survey estimation and pdxTrees for exploring the trees of Portland, OR.

I love demystifying research for students and have had the opportunity to mentor many budding researchers. I am currently looking for summer research fellows. You must be a Harvard or Reed undergraduate to apply.

Education

Colorado State University | Fort Collins, CO

Ph.D. in Statistics | 2011

Masters in Statistics | 2008

St. Olaf College | Northfield, MN

B.A. in Mathematics | 2006

Interests

• Survey statistics
• Machine/statistical learning
• Statistics and data science education