I am an assistant professor at the University of Toronto, jointly appointed in the Faculty of Information and the Department of Statistical Sciences. I am interested in developing workflows that improve the trustworthiness of data science. I am particularly interested in the role of code and testing in data science.
I am co-founder of the Toronto Data Workshop, a weekly, online, seminar series that brings together academia and industry to share data science and AI best practice. You can sign up here.
I am the Assistant Director of CANSSI Ontario; the Director, Technical Skills Curriculum & Instruction, for the Data Sciences Institute’s Data Science and Machine Learning Certificates; a Senior Fellow at Massey College; a faculty affiliate at the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society; and a co-lead of the DSI Thematic Program in Reproducibility.
My book, Telling Stories With Data, argues that a trustworthiness revolution is needed in data science, and I propose a view of what it could look like. It has been strongly endorsed, including: Andrew Gelman “I absolutely love this book”, Kosuke Imai “I highly recommend this unique book!”, Sir David Spiegelhalter “[A]n extraordinary, wonderful, book…”, Daniela Witten “An excellent book”, and Richard McElreath “This is not another statistics book. It is much better than that.” You can buy a print copy here and you can access the free online version here.
My teaching helps students from a wide range of backgrounds learn how to use data to tell convincing stories. I am an associate editor of the Journal of Statistics and Data Science Education.
I hold a PhD in Economics from the Australian National University where I focused on economic history and was supervised by John Tang (chair), Martine Mariotti, Tim Hatton, and Zach Ward.
I am married to Monica Alexander, and we have two young children.