Rachel Schutt, Professor
Dr. Rachel Schutt is a Senior Research Scientist at Johnson Research Labs. Prior to that, she was a Senior Statistician at Google Research in the New York office. She is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor in Columbia’s Statistics Department, and is a founding member of the Education Committee for the Institute for Data Sciences and Engineering at Columbia. Rachel is co-authoring a book (with Cathy O’Neil) called “Doing Data Science” to be published by O’Reilly in 2013.
Her interests include statistical modeling, exploratory data analysis, machine learning algorithms, and social networks, as well as the ethical dimensions of Data Science, and using Data Science to do good. She holds several pending patents. She is a frequent speaker at conferences and universities.
She earned her PhD from Columbia University in Statistics, and Masters degrees in Mathematics and Engineering from the Courant Institute (NYU) and Stanford University, respectively. Her undergraduate degree is in Honors Mathematics from the University of Michigan.
Jared Lander, Lab Instructor
Jared Lander is a data science consultant based in New York City. With a masters from Columbia University in statistics and a bachelors from Muhlenberg College in mathematics, he has experience in both academic research and industry. His work for both large and small organizations ranges from music and fund raising to finance and humanitarian relief efforts. He recently became co-organizer of the New York Open Statistical Programming (formerly R) meetup and is the author of an upcoming book aimed at teaching R to Nonstatisticians. A sampling of his projects can be found at http://www.jaredlander.com.
Benjamin Reddy, Teaching Assistant
Ben Reddy is a second-year PhD student in the statistics department at Columbia. Thankfully, no one has made him decide on a dissertation topic, as he finds something new to be fascinated by on a daily basis. In previous lives he has been a physicist, an economist, and a fry cook. In his free time he races bicycles and likes to explore his neighborhood algorithmically.
Cathy O’Neil, Data Journalist
Cathy O’Neil, aka mathbabe, holds her PhD from Harvard in mathematics. She has worked variously as a math professor at Barnard College, a quant at DE Shaw, and in lead data scientist positions. She is active in the Occupy Wall Street movement. For the purposes of this class, she is serving as a data journalist. She reports from the weekly Wednesday lectures to explain everything that happened in her usual clear and insightful way.
