I have been thinking for a while how hard it is to find statisticians to interview for the blog. When I started the interview series, it was targeted at interviewing statisticians at the early stages of their careers. It is relatively easy, if you work in academic statistics, to name 5 famous statisticians. If you asked me to do that, I’d probably say something like: Efron, Tibshirani, Irizarry, Prentice, and Storey. I could also name 5 famous statisticians in industry with relative ease: Mason, Volinsky, Heineike, Patil, Conway.
Most of that is because of where I went to school (Storey/Prentice), the area I work in (Tibshirani/Irizarry/Storey), my advisor (Storey), or the bootstrap (Efron) and the people I see on Twitter (all the industry folks). I could, of course, name a lot of other famous statisticians. Almost all of them biased by my education or the books I read.
But almost surely I will miss people who work outside my area or didn’t go to school where I did. This is particularly true in applied statistics, where people might not even spend most of their time in statistics departments. It is doubly true of people who are young and just getting started, as I haven’t had a chance to hear about them.
So if you have a few minutes in the comments name five statisticians you admire. Then name five junior statisticians you think will be awesome. They don’t have to be famous (in fact it is better if they are good but not famous so I can learn something). Plus it will be interesting to see the responses.