David Firth (born 22 December 1957) is a British

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

. He is

Emeritus Professor ''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...

in the Department of Statistics at the

University of Warwick , mottoeng = Mind moves matter , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £7.0 million (2021) , budget = £698.2 million (2020 ...

Education

Firth was born and went to school in

Wakefield Wakefield is a cathedral city in West Yorkshire, England located on the River Calder. The city had a population of 99,251 in the 2011 census.https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/census/2011/ks101ew Census 2011 table KS101EW Usual resident population, ...

. He studied Mathematics at the

University of Cambridge , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

and completed his PhD in Statistics at

Imperial College London Imperial College London (legally Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom. Its history began with Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, who developed his vision for a cu ...

, supervised by Sir David Cox.

Research

Firth is known for his development of a general method for reducing the

bias Bias is a disproportionate weight ''in favor of'' or ''against'' an idea or thing, usually in a way that is closed-minded, prejudicial, or unfair. Biases can be innate or learned. People may develop biases for or against an individual, a group ...

maximum likelihood estimation In statistics, maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) is a method of estimating the parameters of an assumed probability distribution, given some observed data. This is achieved by maximizing a likelihood function so that, under the assumed stati ...

in parametric

statistical models A statistical model is a mathematical model that embodies a set of statistical assumptions concerning the generation of sample data (and similar data from a larger population). A statistical model represents, often in considerably idealized form, ...

. The method has seen application in a wide variety of research fields, especially with

logistic regression In statistics, the logistic model (or logit model) is a statistical model that models the probability of an event taking place by having the log-odds for the event be a linear combination of one or more independent variables. In regression an ...

analysis where the reduced-bias estimates also have reduced

variance In probability theory and statistics, variance is the expectation of the squared deviation of a random variable from its population mean or sample mean. Variance is a measure of dispersion, meaning it is a measure of how far a set of numbe ...

and are always finite; the latter property overcomes the frequently encountered problem of separation, which causes maximum likelihood estimates to be infinite. The original paper published in 1993 has been cited more than 4000 times according t
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Together with a PhD student, Renée de Menezes, Firth also established the generality of the method of quasi variances, a device for summarizing economically the estimated effects of a categorical predictor variable in a statistical model.

Applied work

Firth developed (in collaboration with

John Curtice Sir John Kevin Curtice (born 10 December 1953) is a British political scientist who is currently professor of politics at the University of Strathclyde and senior research fellow at the National Centre for Social Research. He is particularly i ...

) a new statistical approach to the design and analysis of election-day exit polls for UK General Elections. The new methods have been used at UK General Elections since 2005 to produce the widely broadcast close-of-polls forecast of seats in the

House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. T ...

Awards and honours

Firth was elected as a

Fellow of the British Academy Fellowship of the British Academy (FBA) is an award granted by the British Academy to leading academics for their distinction in the humanities and social sciences. The categories are: # Fellows – scholars resident in the United Kingdom # ...

in 2008. He was the recipient of the

Royal Statistical Society The Royal Statistical Society (RSS) is an established statistical society. It has three main roles: a British learned society for statistics, a professional body for statisticians and a charity which promotes statistics for the public good. ...

Guy Medal The Guy Medals are awarded by the Royal Statistical Society in three categories; Gold, Silver and Bronze. The Silver and Bronze medals are awarded annually. The Gold Medal was awarded every three years between 1987 and 2011, but is awarded biennia ...

in Bronze in 1998 and in Silver in 2012. With Dr Heather Turner he won the John M Chambers Statistical Software Award 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 continuousl ...

in 2007, for th
''gnm'' package
which facilitates working with generalized nonlinear models (a synthesis of

nonlinear regression In statistics, nonlinear regression is a form of regression analysis in which observational data are modeled by a function which is a nonlinear combination of the model parameters and depends on one or more independent variables. The data are fi ...

and

generalized linear models In statistics, a generalized linear model (GLM) is a flexible generalization of ordinary linear regression. The GLM generalizes linear regression by allowing the linear model to be related to the response variable via a ''link function'' and by ...

) in R. He is a former Editor of the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series B (Statistical Methodology).

References

External links

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Google Scholar profile
{{DEFAULTSORT:Firth, David Fellows of the British Academy British statisticians People from Wakefield Alumni of the University of Cambridge Alumni of Imperial College London Alumni of the University of London Fellows of Nuffield College, Oxford Academics of the University of Warwick Living people 1957 births