Postdoc Position #2: Hierarchical Modeling and Statistical Graphics

Andrew Gelman (Columbia University) and Eric Johnson (Columbia University) seek to hire a post-doctoral fellow to work on the application of the latest methods of multilevel data analysis, visualization and regression modeling to an important commercial problem: forecasting retail sales at the individual item level. These forecasts are used to make ordering, pricing and promotions decisions which can have significant economic impact to the retail chain such that even modest improvements in the accuracy of predictions, across a large retailer’s product line, can yield substantial margin improvements.

Activities focus on the development of iterative imputation algorithms and diagnostics for missing-data imputation. Activities would include model-development, programming, and data analysis. This project is to be undertaken with, and largely funded by, a firm which provides forecasting technology and services to large retail chains, and which will provide access to a unique and rich set of proprietary data. The postdoc will be expected to spend some time working directly with this firm, but this is fundamentally a research position.

The ideal candidate will have a background in statistics, psychometrics, or economics and be interested in marketing or related topics. He or she should be able to work fluently in R and should already know about hierarchical models and Bayesian inference and computation.

The successful candidate will become part of the lively Applied Statistics Center community, which includes several postdocs (with varied backgrounds in statistics, computer science, and social science), Ph.D., M.A., and undergraduate students, and faculty at Columbia and elsewhere. We want people who love collaboration and have the imagination, drive, and technical skills to make a difference in our projects.

If you are interested in this position, please send a letter of application, a CV, some of your articles, and three letters of recommendation to the Applied Statistics Center coordinator, Caroline Peters, [email protected]. Review of applications will begin immediately.

3 thoughts on “Postdoc Position #2: Hierarchical Modeling and Statistical Graphics

  1. Times have changed

    I tried to arrange the same sort of project with a large grocery chain as an MBA school project in the 80’s and the chain refused to provide unaltered data (for confidentiality concerns) and the required faculty member refused to supervise as he felt it would force him to provide “free consulting”…

    Recall there being fascinating pay day effects and seasonality by region interactions.

    The other thing I remember most was that in grocery store, if you put the high profit items on the eye level shelves rather than the highly advertized popular low profit items – the store profits went way up – but many employees were very reluctant to do that.

    Now apparently most of the profit comes from selling those 5 cent plastic bags (in Canada at least).

    K?

  2. Dear prof. Gelman,

    When the postdoc is expected to start? The other postdoc start next summer or before. Is it the same to this one?

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