Research Areas
Applied Statistics, statistical/machine learning, causal inference
Current Projects
Currently working on a wide variety of applications, including inmate classification and placement systems, climate dynamics, detecting violations of environmental regulations, and forecasting criminal behavior. Also working on problems with conventional model selection procedures and on extending machine/statistical learning to data with more than one response variable.
Representative Publications
Regression Analysis: A Constructive Critique. Newbury Park: Sage Publications 2003.
(with D. Kondrashov, Jason Shen, Fabio D'Andrea, and Michael Ghil)
"Predicting Weather Regime Transitions in Northern Hemisphere Datasets," Climate Dynamics 19(3):535-551 (2007).
(with John MacDonald)
“Overdisperson and Poisson Regression,“ Journal of Quantitative Criminology 24(3):269-285 (2008).
"Forecasting Methods in Crime and Justice," Annual Review of Law and Social Science Vol 4: 173-192, 2008.
(with David Freedman)
“On Weighting Regressions by Propensity Scores,“ Evaluation Review, 32:392-409 (2008).
Statistical Learning from a Regression Perspective, New York: Springer, 2008.
(with Brian Kriegler and Don Ylvisaker)
"Counting the Homeless in Los Angeles County," , in Probability and Statistics: Essays in Honor of David A. Freedman, Monograph Series for the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, D. Nolan and S. Speed (eds.), 2008.
(with Lawrence Sherman, Geoffrey Barnes, Ellen Kurtz, and Lindsay Ahlman)
"Forecasting Murder Within a Population of Probationers and Parolees: A High Stakes Application of Statistical Learning," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society (Series A), 172, part 1:191-211 (2009).
Education
PhD, The Johns Hopkins University, 1970; BA, Yale University, 1964
Recent Consulting
Philadelphia Adult Department of Probation and Parole; Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole; Los Angeles Police Department; Mesa (Arizona) Police Department; Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services
Career and Recent Professional Awards; Teaching Awards
Elected to the Sociological Research Association;
Elected Fellow to the American Association for the Advancement of Science; Paul S. Lazarsfeld Award for methodological contributions from the American Sociological Association; Elected Fellow of the American Statistical Association; Elected Fellow of the Academy of Experimental Criminology
Academic Positions Held
Wharton: 2006-present. University of Pennsylvania:2006-present. Previous appointments: University of California, Los Angles; University of California, Santa Barbara; Northwestern University. Visiting appointments: Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, France; Los Alamos National Laboratories, Statistics Group
Professional Leadership 2005-2009
Editor, The Evaluation Review
Corporate and Public Sector Leadership 2005-2009
National Research Council Panel on the Design of the 2010 Census Program of Evaluations and Experiments (CPEX)
