Norman Saul Matloff (born December 16, 1948) is an American professor of

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

at the

University of California, Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Davis, California, United States. It is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University ...

Early life

Norman Saul Matloff was born on December 16, 1948. Matloff received his

Doctor of Philosophy A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of Postgraduate education, graduate study and original resear ...

degree in 1975 from the mathematics department at the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school the ...

under the supervision of

Thomas M. Liggett Thomas Milton Liggett (March 29, 1944 – May 12, 2020) was a mathematician at the UCLA, University of California, Los Angeles. He worked in probability theory, specializing in interacting particle systems. Early life Thomas Milton Liggett was b ...

. His dissertation was titled ''Equilibrium Behavior in an Infinite Voting Model''.

Career

Matloff is the author of several books on computer science, statistics and programming, including * The Art of R Programming * The Art of Debugging with GDB, DDD and Eclipse * Parallel Computing for Data Science: With Examples in R, C++ and Cuda * Fast Lane to Python: A Quick, Sensible Route to the Joys of Python Coding * Probability and Statistics for Data Science: Math + R + Data * Statistical Regression and Classification: From Linear Models to Machine Learning * Regression and Classification in R: A Careful, Thus Practical View Matloff is also the author of many articles concerning machine learning,

parallel computing Parallel computing is a type of computing, computation in which many calculations or Process (computing), processes are carried out simultaneously. Large problems can often be divided into smaller ones, which can then be solved at the same time. ...

and recommender systems. His just under 2000 citations amount to an h-index of 22. Matloff also writes
blog
He views the increased use of

H-1B visa The H-1B is a foreign worker visa in the United States that allows U.S. employers to hire foreign workers in so-called specialty occupations. The regulation and implementation of the visa program is carried out by the United States Citizenship ...

s in the high technology field as an unnecessary practice that harms the prospects of Americans in the field. His opinions have been published in US national media relating broader policy debates about immigration, education, discrimination, and business hiring practices. Matloff previously served as the Editor in Chief of the R Journal. He is the author of several software packages for the programming language R and holds a conservative view of R's development, discouraging premature exposure of students to the newer

Tidyverse The tidyverse is a collection of open source packages for the R programming language introduced by Hadley Wickham and his team that "share an underlying design philosophy, grammar, and data structures" of tidy data. Characteristic features of t ...

dialect of R. His views are supported by other academic teachers of the R language including Holger K. von Juanne-Diedrich, Jasper McChesney and a few others. However, academic debate contains many arguments for the use of Tidyverse and the dialect has won over most certifications in R.

Awards

In 2002, together with two colleagues, he was awarded the annual Distinguished Public Service Awards at UC Davis.

"Matloff has testified before the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives on immigration issues and has served as an expert witness in age-discrimination lawsuits. He has advised federal and state agencies, including the U.S. departments of Commerce and State and the White House, on employment issues. He has served on a number of panels and committees on computer-industry hiring practices sponsored by industry, academia, government and public interest groups."

Bibliography

* 1988: ''Probability Modeling and Computer Simulation: An Integrated Introduction With Applications to Engineering and Computer Science (Duxbury Series)'' (Wadsworth) * 1992: ''IBM Microcomputer Architecture and Assembly Language: A Look Under The Hood'' (

Prentice Hall Prentice Hall was a major American publishing#Textbook_publishing, educational publisher. It published print and digital content for the 6–12 and higher-education market. It was an independent company throughout the bulk of the twentieth cen ...

) * 2007: ''The Art of Debugging With Gdb/Ddd: For Professionals and Students'' (

No Starch Press No Starch Press is an American publishing company, specializing in technical literature often geared towards the geek, hacker, and DIY subcultures. Popular titles include '' Hacking: The Art of Exploitation'', Andrew Huang's ''Hacking the Xbo ...

) * 2011: ''The Art of R Programming'' (

)

References

*
NEXT@CNN
Matloff interviewed on subject of H1-B and immigration of technology workers 28 September 2003

1998-2002

External links

*
Upon Closer Inspection
' (Matloff blog) *

' (Gawker) {{DEFAULTSORT:Matloff, Norman Living people 1948 births University of California, Los Angeles alumni University of California, Davis faculty American whistleblowers People from Los Angeles Activists from California R (programming language) people