Rachel Margaret Harter is an American statistician and an expert in small area estimation and survey methodology. She works at RTI International as a senior research statistician and as director of the Behavioral Statistics Program.[1]

Harter grew up in Indiana, and graduated in 1979 from Wittenberg University in Ohio with a bachelor's degree in mathematics. She then went to Iowa State University for her graduate studies in statistics, earning a master's degree in 1981 and completing her Ph.D. in 1983.[1] Her dissertation, Small area Estimation Using Nested-Error Models and Auxiliary Data, concerned small area estimation and was supervised by Wayne Fuller.[2]

After completing her doctorate, Harter worked for the Nielsen Corporation doing survey statistics and NORC at the University of Chicago as a survey statistician and head of the statistics and methodology department. She joined RTI in 2011.[1][3]

Harter has published highly cited research on using small area estimation to predict crop areas from satellite data.[4] In 2016, the American Statistical Association recognized Harter as one of their Fellows.[5]

References edit

  1. ^ a b c "Rachel M. Harter", A Statistician's Life, Celebrating Women in Statistics, AmStat News, March 1, 2018
  2. ^ Rachel M. Harter at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  3. ^ "NORC Annual Report 2009, page 24 statistics and methodology department" (PDF). Retrieved October 15, 2023.
  4. ^ Battese, George E.; Harter, Rachel M.; Fuller, Wayne A. (March 1988), "An Error-Components Model for Prediction of County Crop Areas Using Survey and Satellite Data", Journal of the American Statistical Association, 83 (401), Informa {UK} Limited: 28–36, doi:10.1080/01621459.1988.10478561, JSTOR 2288915
  5. ^ "JSM 2016: The Extraordinary Power of Statistics", AmStat News, October 1, 2016