Michael Cohen (statistician)


Michael Paul Cohen is an American mathematical statistician known for his contributions to survey methodology, education statistics, and the design of large-scale federal surveys. Cohen is a Principal Statistician at the American Institutes for Research. He has held research and leadership positions at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the National Center for Education Statistics, the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, Statistical Consulting LLC, and AIR. His research has addressed topics including the Consumer Price Index, multilevel survey design, Bayesian methods for unequal probability sampling, and applications of statistical methodology in education and transportation. Cohen is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Educational Research Association, the American Statistical Association, the Royal Statistical Society, and the Washington Academy of Sciences, and an elected member of the International Statistical Institute and Sigma Xi.

Education

Cohen earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics with honors from the University of California, San Diego. He went on to complete his Ph.D. in mathematics with specialty in mathematical statistics at the University of California, Los Angeles, where his doctoral advisor was Charles Joel Stone. His dissertation was titled Fisher Information and Estimators of Location-Scale Parameters.

Career

After completing his doctorate, Cohen joined the Bureau of Labor Statistics, where he contributed to survey methodology and research on the Consumer Price Index and the Consumer Expenditure Survey. With John P. Sommers, he developed methods for estimating cost weights in the CPI that were implemented in the 1987 CPI Revision.
At the National Center for Education Statistics, Cohen did foundational work on the newly established Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System and later joined the Statistical Methodology Group that was responsible ensuring the soundness of NCES publications and data products.
At the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, he was lead mathematical statistician for the U.S. Commodity Flow Survey and later served as the BTS Assistant Director for Survey Programs overseeing BTS statistical surveys.

Awards and honors

Cohen is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Educational Research Association, the American Statistical Association, the Royal Statistical Society, and the Washington Academy of Sciences. His ASA Fellow award was for "technical contributions to a wide range of topics in survey research; for technical leadership within government organizations; and for outstanding service to the profession."
In addition, Cohen was honored with the American Statistical Association Outstanding Service Award in 2010 and the Washington Statistical Society President's Award in 1999 for "many WSS contributions."

Editorial work

Cohen served as an associate editor of the Journal of the American Statistical Association from 2004 to 2006..He has been an associate editor of the Journal of Official Statistics since 2003, and a consulting editor of the Journal of Experimental Education since 2010.

Professional activities

He was President of the Washington Statistical Society from 2007 to 2008. He served as a member of the Congress of the Mathematical Association of America from 2018 to 2021. He also serves on the Board of Directors of the National Association of Academies of Science.

Selected publications