Penn Professors on Writing in Statistics

Professor Mark Low

About the Professor

Professor Low received a ScB from Brown University and a PhD from Cornell. He is a statistics professor at the Wharton School of Business, and he specializes in the theoretical branch. His primary research areas include statistical inference, nonparametric function estimation, and decision theory.

Personal Writing Process

The first part of the writing process for Professor Low is to explain and develop the theory in writing; the idea is of central importance to the paper, and must be packaged in an interesting way. He then moves on to the introduction, which must illustrate to the reader why the paper is interesting. It also provides context to the paper, which is then split into distinct parts illustrating the mathematical findings. He proceeds to do a lot of revision to both enhance clarity and simplify the math. However, he tries to avoid too many distant outside readers due to past experiences where people had reviewed his paper and taken his ideas. He considers himself to be innately relaxed in his sharing with outside readers, but is now much more cautious in this respect.

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Other professors in statistics: Professor Dylan Small