Roderick J Little

Richard D Remington Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of Biostatistics, Professor Emeritus of Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Professor Emeritus of Statistics, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts and Research Professor Emeritus of Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research

BIO

Rod Little chaired the Biostatistics Department from January 2007 to December 2009, and from 1993 to 2001. Prior to that he was Professor in the Department of Biomathematics at the University of California at Los Angeles; Research Fellow at the U.S. Bureau of the Census (1982-83); Expert Consultant at the United States Environmental Protection Agency; Scientific Associate at the World Fertility Survey; and Research Associate (Assistant Professor) in the Department of Statistics, University of Chicago.

Active editorially, he was Coordinating and Applications Editor of the Journal of the American Statistical Association from 1992-1994, and co-editor of the Journal of Survey Statistics and Methodology from 2016-2018. From Jan 2010-Dec 2012 Little was a Vice President of the American Statistical Association.

Since his fellowship at the Census Bureau he has been interested in federal statistical issues such as the census undercount, and he has served as a member of the Committee on National Statistics and a number of other National Research Council committees. In 2009-10 he chaired an NRC study on the prevention and treatment of missing data in clinical trials. From Sep 2010-Jan 2013 Little served as the inaugural Associate Director for Research and Methodology and Chief Scientist at the U.S. Census Bureau.

Little has over 240 refereed publications, notably on methods for the analysis of data with missing values and model-based survey inference, and the application of statistics to diverse scientific areas, including medicine, demography, economics, psychiatry, aging and the environment. His book Statistical Analysis with Missing Data with Don Rubin is in its 3rd edition and has over 40,000 google scholar citations, and his latest book “Seminal Ideas and Controversies in Statistics” was published in March of 2025. He has chaired or co-chaired 32 doctoral committees. In 2005 Dr. Little received the Wilks’ Memorial Award from the American Statistical Association for his research contributions. Other awards include the Waksberg Award for contributions to survey methodology, the Pearson Prize from the International Statistical Institute, and the Founders’ Award from the American Statistical Association. Keynote lectures include the President’s Invited Address and the COPSS Fisher lecture at the Joint Statistical Meetings.

Little is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the National Academy of Medicine.

Roderick Little

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