Rachel Margaret Harter is an American statistician and an expert in

small area estimation Small area estimation is any of several statistical techniques involving the estimation of parameters for small sub-populations, generally used when the sub-population of interest is included in a larger survey. The term "small area" in this con ...

and

survey methodology Survey methodology is "the study of survey methods". As a field of applied statistics concentrating on human-research surveys, survey methodology studies the sampling of individual units from a population and associated techniques of survey d ...

. Until 2024, she worked at

RTI International Research Triangle Institute, operating as RTI International, is a nonprofit organization headquartered in the Research Triangle Park in North Carolina, USA. RTI provides research and technical services. It was founded in 1958 with $500,000 in fu ...

as a senior research statistician and as director of the Behavioral Statistics Program. Harter grew up in Indiana, and graduated in 1979 from

Wittenberg University Wittenberg University (officially Wittenberg College) is a private liberal arts college in Springfield, Ohio. It has 1,326 full-time students drawn from 33 states and 9 foreign countries. Wittenberg University is associated with the Evangelical ...

in Ohio with a bachelor's degree in mathematics. She then went to

Iowa State University Iowa State University of Science and Technology (Iowa State University, Iowa State, or ISU) is a Public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in Ames, Iowa, United States. Founded in 1858 as the Iowa Agricult ...

for her graduate studies in statistics, earning a master's degree in 1981 and completing her Ph.D. in 1983. Her dissertation, ''Small area Estimation Using Nested-Error Models and Auxiliary Data'', concerned

and was supervised by

Wayne Fuller Wayne Arthur Fuller (born June 15, 1931) is an American statistician who has specialised in econometrics, survey sampling and time series analysis. He was on the staff of Iowa State University from 1959, becoming a Distinguished Professor in 1983 ...

. After completing her doctorate, Harter worked for the

Nielsen Corporation NIQ (also known as NielsenIQ, formerly known as ACNielsen or AC Nielsen) is a global marketing research firm, with worldwide headquarters in Chicago, Illinois, United States. The company has approximately 30,000 employees and operates in more ...

doing survey statistics and

NORC at the University of Chicago NORC at the University of Chicago, previously the National Opinion Research Center, is an independent social research organization in the United States. Established in 1941, its corporate headquarters is located in downtown Chicago, with office ...

as a survey statistician and head of the statistics and methodology department. She joined RTI in 2011. Harter has published highly cited research on using small area estimation to predict crop areas from satellite data. In 2016, 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 ...

recognized Harter as one of their Fellows.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Harter, Rachel M. Year of birth missing (living people) Living people American statisticians American women statisticians Wittenberg University alumni Fellows of the American Statistical Association