CLA’s Heir to Einstein
Photo by Terry Faust
For R. Dennis Cook, professor in the School of Statistics, it’s been a banner year. Last summer, Cook was named the 2005 recipient of the R.A. Fischer Lectureship Award, which is given annually by a consortium of professional statistical societies for outstanding scholarly work in the field. Named for Ronald A. Fischer, who has been called “The Founding Father of Modern Statistics”—”he’s like our Einstein,” says Cook—the award is the most prestigious honor bestowed on academic statisticians.
Kudos for the affable Cook continued when he was named the 2006-07 College of Liberal Arts’ Dean’s Medalist for his creativity, scholarly achievements, and stellar teaching. “I’m deeply honored by both awards,” says Cook, who has been a member of the U of M faculty since 1971, soon after he earned his Ph.D. in statistics from Kansas State University.
Through a distinguished academic career, Cook has specialized in a number of areas of statistical study, including population genetics, statistical diagnostics, experimental design, and statistical graphics. “I’ve tended to switch interests about every seven years,” he says.
The subject of his latest research efforts is described in the title of his Fischer Lecture, delivered last August in Minneapolis at the annual meeting of the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies—the group of professional societies, including the American Statistical Association, that designated him last year’s Fischer scholar. Called “Dimension Reduction in Regression,” the speech outlined the sort of research he has been conducting at the University for the past several years.
“Dimension reduction is the process of taking a whole lot of information and reducing it to one number,” says Cook. “Think of the mortgage process when you’re buying a house. Lenders take all of the accumulated numbers that make up a person’s credit history, and boil them down to one score, by which they judge an applicant. That’s in the nature of what I’m doing with my current research. In my work, I look for the relevant information and nothing but the relevant information.”
A native of Montana, Cook is married to Jami Cook and has two grown sons and three grandchildren. He is also deeply fond of a restored 1978 MGB, which allows him to trade in the complexities of his work for the simple relevance of a top-down cruise in the countryside.