Home Page for Professor Jessica Utts

Department of Statistics

University of California, Irvine

Professor Jessica Utts Chair, Department of Statistics University of California, Irvine.   Photo courtesy of Robert Knight

Contact Information

Professor Jessica Utts Department of Statistics Donald Bren Hall University of California Irvine, CA 92697-1250

Phone: 949-824-0649 Fax: 949-824-9863 Department Office: 949-824-5392 Email (not clickable to reduce spamming): Office location: 2212 Donald Bren Hall, UC Irvine Department office: 2042 Donald Bren Hall, UC Irvine

Major Administrative and Service Roles (Current and Recent Past, with links)

• Chair, Department of Statistics, University of California, Irvine
• Member, Board of Directors, American Statistical Association
• Chair, Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies (COPSS), Jan 2007 - Dec 2009
• Chair of the Board, Consortium for the Advancement of Undergraduate Statistics Education (CAUSE)
• Vice-Chair of the Board, National Institute of Statistical Sciences (NISS)

Representative Presentations

• California State University, Fullerton, October 6, 2011: Are we all Bayesians? The strength of evidence vs the power of belief
• California Mathematics Council, Community Colleges (CMC³), December 13, 2008, Monterey, CA
• Analysis of Milton Wiseman Meta-analysis, July 15, 2007, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
• WNAR New Researchers' Lunch, June 26, 2007, Irvine, CA
• Japanese Behaviormetrics Society, September 12, 2006, Tokyo, Japan
• Japan Joint Statistics Meeting, September 7, 2006, Sendai, Japan
• Stor Konferens om Parapsykologisk Forskning, Stockholm, Sweden, August 3, 2006
• GAISE Workshop/AMATYC, Nov 8&9, 2005
• CMCCC, Dec 2, 2005

Current Classes

Fall 2012

• Statistics 110 and 201, Statistical Methods for Data Analysis I

Past Classes at UC Irvine

Winter 2012

• Statistics 7, Basic Statistics

Fall 2011

• Statistics 210,Statistical Methods I: Linear Models

Fall 2010

• Statistics 8, Introduction to Biostatistics
• Statistics 210,Statistical Methods I: Linear Models

Winter 2010 and Winter 2011

• Statistics 7, Introductory Statistics (link removed)

Fall 2009

• Statistics 7, Introductory Statistics (link removed)
• Statistics 110 and 201, Statistical Methods for Data Analysis I

Winter 2009

• Statistics 7, Introductory Statistics

Fall 2008

• Statistics 110 and 201, Statistical Methods for Data Analysis I (link removed)

Past Classes at UC Davis

Fall 2007

• Statistics 108, Regression Analysis
• Statistics 390, Methods of Teaching Statistics

Fall 2006

• Statistics 13V, Web-based Statistics (Link removed)
• Statistics 390, Methods of Teaching Statistics

2005-2006

Sabbatical leave at the University of California, Irvine

Spring 2005

• Integrated Studies 8C, Testing Psychic Claims

Interesting Links

Parapsychology Links:

• Parapsychology researchers, labs, online experiments, etc
• Some research papers in Parapsychology
• Frequently Asked Questions about Parapsychology

Statistics Links:

• Causeweb: Consortium for the Advancement of Statistics Education (great resource!)
• My personal favorite! Provides links to hundreds of statistical calculators (by John Pezzullo)
• Examples and Information about Polls, Statistical Studies, etc. (by Bob Heckard)
• Ten Websites Every Statistics Instructor Should Bookmark (by Robin Lock)
• The Rice Virtual Lab in Statistics (by David Lane, Rice University)
• The Chance Website
• StatLib, a compendium of useful information about statistics departments, journals, etc.

My Curriculum Vitae

• Employment History
• Administrative Experience
• Awards, Activities and Grants
• Publications (Scroll down to "My Research Interests" on this page for links to some publications.)
• Word
• PDF

Where I Received my Degrees

• Bachelor of Arts in Math and Psychology at the State University of New York at Binghamton in 1973.
• Master of Arts (1975) and Ph.D. (1978) from the Department of Statistics at Penn State University

Places I Have Had Visiting Appointments

• Department of Statistics, Stanford University
• Koestler Chair of Parapsychology, University of Edinburgh
• Institut für Grenzgebiete der Psychologie und Psychohygiene (IGPP)
• SRI International, project now moved to Cognitive Sciences Laboratory

My Research Interests

I am interested in applied statistics, and have published most extensively on the use of statistics in parapsychology.
I am also interested in statistics education and literacy.
I have provided some of the most commonly requested papers here.

In the Fall of 1995 Professor Ray Hyman (University of Oregon)and I prepared a report assessing the statistical evidence for psychic functioning in US government sponsored research. The report was part of a review done by the American Institutes of Research (AIR) at the request of Congress and the CIA. It received wide-spread media coverage.
My report and related reports:

• An Assessment Of The Evidence For Psychic Functioning
• Professor Hyman's report.
• Utts' reply to Hyman's report
• Response by Dr. Edwin May, the lead investigator for the government-sponsored work and Director, Cognitive Sciences Laboratory

"Replication and Meta-Analysis in Parapsychology."  (Statistical Science, with commentary by others) - summarizes some of the statistical evidence for psi phenomena that was available at the time the paper was written (1991).

Utts, Jessica (1999). The Significance of Statistics in Mind-Matter Research, Journal of Scientific Exploration, 13(4), 615-638.

"The Paranormal: the Evidence and its Implications for Consciousness"  published in the [London] Times Higher Education Supplement, Apr. 5th. 1996, page (v), with Nobel Laureate Brian Josephson

Utts, Jessica (2003). What Educated Citizens Should Know about Statistics and Probability, American Statistician, 57(2), 74-79.

My Books

Seeing Through Statistics, 3rd edition (2005), ISBN 0-534-39402-7

Mind On Statistics, 4th edition (2012) by Jessica Utts and Robert Heckard, ISBN-10: 0538733489 ISBN-13: 9780538733489

Statistical Ideas and Methods, 1st edition (2006) by Jessica Utts and Robert Heckard, ISBN 0-049-512250-5

Last updated March 2012 (with some links updated in the more distant past)