Alan Gilbert Agresti (born February 6, 1947) is an American

statistician A statistician is a person who works with Theory, theoretical or applied statistics. The profession exists in both the private sector, private and public sectors. It is common to combine statistical knowledge with expertise in other subjects, a ...

and Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the

University of Florida The University of Florida (Florida or UF) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in Gainesville, Florida, United States. It is a senior member of the State University System of Florida and a preem ...

. He has written several textbooks on

categorical data analysis This is a list of statistical procedures which can be used for the analysis of categorical data, also known as data on the nominal scale and as categorical variables. General tests * Bowker's test of symmetry * Categorical distribution, general m ...

that are considered seminal in the field. The Agresti–Coull confidence interval for a binomial proportion is named after him and his doctoral student Brent Coull.

Biography

Agresti earned his bachelor's degree in mathematics from the

University of Rochester The University of Rochester is a private university, private research university in Rochester, New York, United States. It was founded in 1850 and moved into its current campus, next to the Genesee River in 1930. With approximately 30,000 full ...

in 1968. He earned his doctorate in statistics from the

University of Wisconsin–Madison The University of Wisconsin–Madison (University of Wisconsin, Wisconsin, UW, UW–Madison, or simply Madison) is a public land-grant research university in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. It was founded in 1848 when Wisconsin achieved st ...

in 1972. His doctoral advisor was

Stephen Stigler Stephen Mack Stigler (born August 10, 1941) is the Ernest DeWitt Burton Distinguished Service Professor at the Department of Statistics of the University of Chicago. He has authored several books on the history of statistics; he is the son of ...

and his thesis work was on

stochastic processes In probability theory and related fields, a stochastic () or random process is a mathematical object usually defined as a family of random variables in a probability space, where the index of the family often has the interpretation of time. Stoc ...

. He was a professor of statistics for many years at the University of Florida, from 1972 until his retirement in 2010 as a Distinguished Professor. He was also a visiting professor at the department of statistics at

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

for several years. Notable doctoral students include Ivy Liu and Brent Coull. He wrote the textbook ''Categorical Data Analysis'' during a sabbatical year at

Imperial College Imperial College London, also known as Imperial, is a public research university in London, England. Its history began with Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, who envisioned a cultural district in South Kensington that included museums ...

. He has taught short courses about categorical data analysis for 30 years at universities around the world, including at several Italian universities, and in 2017 became a dual citizen of Italy and the United States.

Honors and awards

He became a fellow of the

American Statistical Association The American Statistical Association (ASA) is the main professional organization for statisticians and related professionals in the United States. It was founded in Boston, Massachusetts, on November 27, 1839, and is the second-oldest continuous ...

in 1990 and a fellow of the

Institute of Mathematical Statistics The Institute of Mathematical Statistics is an international professional and scholarly society devoted to the development, dissemination, and application of statistics and probability. The Institute currently has about 4,000 members in all parts ...

in 2008. He received an honorary doctorate from

De Montfort University De Montfort University Leicester (DMU) is a public university in the city of Leicester, England. It was established in accordance with the Further and Higher Education Act 1992, Further and Higher Education Act in 1992 as a degree awarding body ...

in 1999. He was named "Statistician of the Year" by the Chicago chapter of the American Statistical Association in 2003. The workshop "Categorical Data Analysis & Friends" was held in his honor in Florence, Italy in 2019.

Personal life

His wife is Jacki Levine.

Selected works

Textbooks

Agresti has written several books on categorical data analysis, including ''An Introduction to Categorical Data Analysis'' and ''Categorical Data Analysis''. Other textbooks include the following: * ''Statistics: The Art and Science of Learning from Data'' * ''Statistical Methods for the Social Sciences'' * ''Analysis of Ordinal Categorical Data, Second Edition'' * ''Foundations of Linear and Generalized Linear Models'' * ''Foundations of Statistics for Data Scientists, with R and Python'' (with Maria Kateri)

Articles

* "A Survey of Exact Inference for Contingency Tables", 1992

References

External links

Personal website
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Agresti, Alan 1947 births Living people American mathematical statisticians Fellows of the American Statistical Association Italian statisticians Naturalised citizens of Italy University of Florida faculty University of Rochester alumni University of Wisconsin–Madison College of Letters and Science alumni