Dan Spitzner

Office Address: Halsey 110
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Research interests: My scholarship aims to understand issues around the coordinated analysis of data in a wide variety of forms, and to develop conceptions of statistical knowledge and accompanying statistical practices that are amenable to integration with alternative modes of inquiry. These modes include varieties of qualitative inquiry, mixed methods research, and epistemologies that radically re-envision the notion of empiricism. I understand statistics as just one set of methodologies within an ecology of methodologies, each with its own approaches to such matters as the contextualization of knowledge, the role of ethical criteria, and the challenges of contributing to public and institutional policy. I am especially interested in the use of statistical methods in socially-inclusive research. This work overlaps at a methodological level with my interests in Bayesian statistics, wherein I have developed techniques for model choice (e.g., in high-dimensional analysis and clustering problems) and the communication of strength-of-evidence, among other specialized areas. Some of my older work examines issues in functional data analysis and classical shrinkage estimation.

• Ph.D., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill