Dick De Veaux, PhD, is a Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Williams College. An expert in applied statistics, his professional interests include data mining methodology and its application to problems in science and industry, as well as model selection and other problems for large data sets. De Veaux holds a doctorate in statistics and a master’s degree in education from Stanford University. A summa cum laude graduate of Princeton University, he earned bachelor’s degrees in civil engineering and mathematics. De Veaux is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association and the author of many research papers. He is co-author, with Paul Velleman and David Bock, of several critically acclaimed textbooks, including Intro Stats and Stats: Data and Models.
I attended my first Discovery Summit conference in 2009. Held at the beautiful Swissôtel in Chicago, it included a keynote speech by Malcolm Gladwell (author of Outliers) and an evening of reminiscing by none other than George E.P. Box! Gladwell gave a memorable speech in which he discussed, among other