John Fox (sociologist)
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Senator William McMaster Professor of Social Statistics
John Fox | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1947 |
| Died | November 26, 2025[1] |
| Citizenship | American, Canadian |
| Title | Professor Emeritus Senator William McMaster Professor of Social Statistics |
| Awards | Elected Member of the R Foundation for Statistical Computing |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | City College of New York (BA) University of Michigan (PhD) |
| Thesis | Behavior In Pure Conflict Of Interest Situations: Experimental Studies Of Two-person, Zerosum Games[2] |
| Doctoral advisor | William A. Gamson |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Sociology, Social Statistics |
| Institutions | McMaster University York University University of Alberta |
| Doctoral students | William K. Carroll |
| Notable works | R Commander (Rcmdr) Applied Regression Analysis and Generalized Linear Models An R Companion to Applied Regression |
| Website | www |
John David Fox (1947 – November 2025) was an American-Canadian sociologist and statistician. He was professor emeritus and the former Senator William McMaster Profeessor of Social Statistics at McMaster University.
Fox was a pivotal figure in the R programming community, recognized for developing the R Commander (Rcmdr) graphical user interface and authoring the widely used "car" (Companion to Applied Regression) and "effects" software packages.[3] His textbooks on regression analysis and statistical computing are considered foundational in the quantitative social sciences, with his work garnering over 110,000 citations.[4]
Fox was born in 1947 in New York City. He attended Brooklyn Technical High School and initially studied engineering at the City College of New York (CCNY) before switching to sociology. He graduated from CCNY with a Bachelor of Arts in 1968.[5] He subsequently attended the University of Michigan, where he earned his PhD in sociology under the supervision of William A. Gamson in 1972,[2] specializing in social psychology and demography.[6]
Academic career
Fox began his teaching career at the University of Alberta and York University in Toronto, where he served as Professor of Sociology, and of Mathematics and Statistics. At York, he also coordinated the Statistical Consulting Service at the Institute for Social Research.[7]
In 1990, he joined the Department of Sociology at McMaster University. He was later appointed the Senator William McMaster Professor of Social Statistics, a position he held until his retirement. Throughout his career, Fox was a frequent instructor at the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) Summer Program at the University of Michigan, teaching quantitative methods to generations of researchers.[6]
Statistical software and the R Project
Fox was an elected member of the R Foundation for Statistical Computing and a significant contributor to the development of the R ecosystem. He developed R Commander (Rcmdr), a cross-platform GUI designed to make R accessible to students and non-programmers by providing point-and-click functionality for complex statistical analyses.[5]
He was the author or co-author of several influential R packages, including:
- "car" (Companion to Applied Regression): tools for regression diagnostics and model building.
- "effects": for visualizing the results of linear models and generalized linear models.
- "ivreg": for instrumental variables estimation.
- "matlib": for matrix algebra and the teaching of linear algebra.
Death
His death was announced by the R Foundation in late November, 2025.[3]
