Luke Tierney is an American

statistician A statistician is a person who works with theoretical or applied statistics. The profession exists in both the private and public sectors. It is common to combine statistical knowledge with expertise in other subjects, and statisticians may wor ...

and

computer scientist A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (al ...

. A fellow of the

Institute of Mathematical Statistics The Institute of Mathematical Statistics is an international professional and scholarly society devoted to the development, dissemination, and application of statistics and probability. The Institute currently has about 4,000 members in all parts o ...

since 1988 and of the

American Statistical Association The American Statistical Association (ASA) is the main professional organization for statisticians and related professionals in the United States. It was founded in Boston, Massachusetts on November 27, 1839, and is the second oldest continuousl ...

since 1991, Tierney is currently a professor of

statistics Statistics (from German language, German: ''wikt:Statistik#German, Statistik'', "description of a State (polity), state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of ...

at the

University of Iowa The University of Iowa (UI, U of I, UIowa, or simply Iowa) is a public university, public research university in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. Founded in 1847, it is the oldest and largest university in the state. The University of Iowa is org ...

. Through his past work on

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Most programming languages are text-based formal languages, but they may also be graphical. They are a kind of computer language. The description of a programming ...

s such as R and

Lisp A lisp is a speech impairment in which a person misarticulates sibilants (, , , , , , , ). These misarticulations often result in unclear speech. Types * A frontal lisp occurs when the tongue is placed anterior to the target. Interdental lisping ...

, Tierney now holds a position on the developing team known as the R Core.

Education

Tierney earned his BA and MA in

mathematical sciences The mathematical sciences are a group of areas of study that includes, in addition to mathematics, those academic disciplines that are primarily mathematical in nature but may not be universally considered subfields of mathematics proper. Statisti ...

from

Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hem ...

in 1977 and later his PhD in

operations research Operations research ( en-GB, operational research) (U.S. Air Force Specialty Code: Operations Analysis), often shortened to the initialism OR, is a discipline that deals with the development and application of analytical methods to improve deci ...

from

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...

in 1980. Formerly a statistics faculty member at

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...

and the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Tw ...

, he now serves as the Ralph E. Wareham Professor of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Iowa, a position he has held since 2002.

Work

In 1990, Tierney wrote the XLispStat package using C and Lisp and has since published works such as ''LISP-STAT: An Object-Oriented Environment for Statistical Computing and Dynamic Graphics (Wiley Series in Probability and Statistics)'' describing its design and use. Tierney has also made contributions in areas such as reference counting, vectors, and compilation for the R programming language and environment. During his time working with R, he has also become part of the R Core, a team of developers with write access to the R source. His work on

Markov chain A Markov chain or Markov process is a stochastic model describing a sequence of possible events in which the probability of each event depends only on the state attained in the previous event. Informally, this may be thought of as, "What happe ...

Bioconductor Bioconductor is a Free software, free, Open-source software, open source and Open source software development, open development software project for the analysis and comprehension of Genome, genomic data generated by Wet laboratory, wet lab experi ...

, Lisp-stat and the

Metropolis–Hastings algorithm In statistics and statistical physics, the Metropolis–Hastings algorithm is a Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method for obtaining a sequence of random samples from a probability distribution from which direct sampling is difficult. This seque ...

have all been highly cited.

Positions, awards and recognition

* Current member of the R Core Team * Former editor of the ''

Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics The ''Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed scientific journal published by Taylor & Francis on behalf of the American Statistical Association. Established in 1992, the journal covers the use of computat ...

'' from 2004 to 2006 * American Statistical Association ** Fellow since 1991 ** Recipient of the 2019 Statistical Computing and Graphics Award * Institute of Mathematical Statistics ** Fellow since 1988 ** Former elected council member from 1995 to 1998 * University of Iowa ** Ralph E. Wareham Professor since 2002 ** Former chair of the statistics department from 2004 to 2014

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tierney, Luke Place of birth missing (living people) Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Johns Hopkins University alumni Cornell University alumni American statisticians American computer scientists Fellows of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics Fellows of the American Statistical Association University of Iowa faculty Carnegie Mellon University faculty University of Minnesota faculty R (programming language) people Computational statisticians