Ben Schneider

I work as a survey statistician at Westat, where I work on statistical sampling and analysis (weighting, imputation, small area estimation, etc.) for probability-based social surveys conducted largely for federal agencies. Before that, I spent several years working at IQS Research, where I used quantitative social science to help a wide variety of organizations incorporate research and analytics into their strategic decision-making.

I recently completed my master’s of science in Survey Methodology with a concentration in statistical science at the Joint Program in Survey Methodology (JPSM) in Maryland. I hold a BA in Economics from Amherst College, where I primarily studied methods for using statistics and economic theory to understand how individuals and organizations make economic decisions. While at Amherst, I worked as a Research Assistant in Amherst College’s Department of Economics (where I conducted research in development economics), as a Research Intern at the National Priorities Project (where I blogged about federal spending and compiled spending and Census data), and in various roles at Reader-to-Reader, Inc. (where I helped kids develop enjoyable and rewarding reading habits).

Inside and outside of work, I’m an avid user of R, a statistical programming language. I use the language as much as I can, whether for work or for personal projects, such as developing R packages and contributing to open-source tools for data analysis. From time to time, I also use the Stan probabilistic programming language. I’m skilled at using other languages for data analysis (SAS, Stata, SPSS, SQL, and a bit of Julia), but I particularly love working with R.

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