David Firth (statistician)
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- University of Cambridge (BA)[1]
- Imperial College London (MSc, PhD)[1]
- Guy Medal (bronze, 1998) (silver, 2012)
- John M Chambers Statistical Software Award (2007)
- Fellow of the British Academy (2008)
David Firth | |
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| Born | 22 December 1957[1] |
| Alma mater |
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| Known for | [6][7] |
| Awards |
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| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Statistics |
| Institutions | |
| Thesis | Quasi-likelihood estimation: Efficiency and other aspects (1987) |
| Doctoral advisor | David Roxbee Cox[8] |
| Website | warwick |
David Firth FBA (born 22 December 1957) is a British statistician.[1] He is Emeritus Professor in the Department of Statistics at the University of Warwick.[1]
Firth was born and went to school in Wakefield.[1] He studied Mathematics at the University of Cambridge[1] and completed his PhD in Statistics at Imperial College London,[1] supervised by Sir David Cox.[8]
Research
Firth is known for his development of a general method[2] for reducing the bias of maximum likelihood estimation in parametric statistical models. The method has seen application in a wide variety of research fields, especially with logistic regression analysis where the reduced-bias estimates also have reduced variance and are always finite;[4] the latter property overcomes the frequently encountered problem of separation, which causes maximum likelihood estimates to be infinite. The original paper published in 1993[2] has been cited more than 4000 times according to Google Scholar.
Together with a PhD student, Renée de Menezes, Firth also established the generality of the method of quasi variances, a device for summarizing economically the estimated effects of a categorical predictor variable in a statistical model.[6][7]
Applied work
Firth developed (in collaboration with John Curtice) a new statistical approach to the design and analysis of election-day exit polls for UK General Elections. The new methods have been used at UK General Elections since 2005 to produce the widely broadcast close-of-polls forecast of seats in the House of Commons.[5]
