Naomi Altman is a

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 ...

known for her work on

kernel smoothing A kernel smoother is a statistical technique to estimate a real valued function f: \mathbb^p \to \mathbb as the weighted average of neighboring observed data. The weight is defined by the ''kernel'', such that closer points are given higher weights. ...

and

kernel regression In statistics, kernel regression is a non-parametric technique to estimate the conditional expectation of a random variable. The objective is to find a non-linear relation between a pair of random variables ''X'' and ''Y''. In any nonparametric r ...

, and interested in applications of statistics to

gene expression Gene expression is the process by which information from a gene is used in the synthesis of a functional gene product that enables it to produce end products, protein or non-coding RNA, and ultimately affect a phenotype, as the final effect. The ...

and

genomics Genomics is an interdisciplinary field of biology focusing on the structure, function, evolution, mapping, and editing of genomes. A genome is an organism's complete set of DNA, including all of its genes as well as its hierarchical, three-dim ...

. She is a professor of statistics at

Pennsylvania State University The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a Public university, public Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related Land-grant university, land-grant research university with campuses and facilities throughout Pennsylvan ...

, and a regular columnist for the "Points of Significance" column in ''

Nature Methods ''Nature Methods'' is a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal covering new scientific techniques. It was established in 2004 and is published by Springer Nature under the Nature Portfolio. Like other ''Nature'' journals, there is no external edi ...

''.

Education and career

Altman studied mathematics at the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution ...

, graduating in 1974, and spent two years teaching at Government Teacher's Training College in

Lafia Lafia is a town in North Central Nigeria. It is the capital city of Nasarawa State and has a population of 330,712 inhabitants according to the 2006 census results. It is the largest town in Nasarawa state. History Lafia, also known as Lafian b ...

Nigeria Nigeria ( ), , ig, Naìjíríyà, yo, Nàìjíríà, pcm, Naijá , ff, Naajeeriya, kcg, Naijeriya officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf o ...

. Returning to Canada, she earned a master's degree in statistics from Toronto in 1979. After working as a statistical consultant at

Simon Fraser University Simon Fraser University (SFU) is a public research university in British Columbia, Canada, with three campuses, all in Greater Vancouver: Burnaby (main campus), Surrey, and Vancouver. The main Burnaby campus on Burnaby Mountain, located from ...

and the

University of British Columbia The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a public university, public research university with campuses near Vancouver and in Kelowna, British Columbia. Established in 1908, it is British Columbia's oldest university. The university ranks a ...

. She completed her doctorate in 1988 from

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

. Her dissertation, supervised by Iain M. Johnstone, was ''Smoothing Data with Correlated Errors''. She joined the

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 ...

faculty, in the

Biometrics Biometrics are body measurements and calculations related to human characteristics. Biometric authentication (or realistic authentication) is used in computer science as a form of identification and access control. It is also used to identify in ...

Unit, and became chair of the Department of Biometrics there from 1997 to 2000. She moved to Penn State in 2001.

Recognition

Altman and her coauthor Julio C. Villarreal won the 2005 Canadian Journal of Statistics Award for their paper "Self-modelling regression for longitudinal data with time-invariant covariates". In 2009, Altman became a

Fellow of the American Statistical Association Like many other academic professional societies, the American Statistical Association (ASA) uses the title of Fellow of the American Statistical Association as its highest honorary grade of membership. The number of new fellows per year is limited ...

Selected publications

References

External links

Home page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Altman, Naomi Year of birth missing (living people) Living people American women statisticians Canadian statisticians University of Toronto alumni Stanford University alumni Pennsylvania State University faculty Fellows of the American Statistical Association Cornell University faculty 21st-century American women