Michael Larsen Chair of Mathematics and Statistics, Professor of Mathematics and Statistics

Michael Larsen

Programs

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Bio

Ph.D., Harvard University, Statistics

M.A., Harvard University, Statistics

B.A., Harvard College, Mathematics cum laude

Courses I Teach

Reasoning with Chance and Data, Elementary Statistics, Biostatistics, Probability, Mathematical Statistics, Regression Analysis, Statistical Models, Senior Seminar, Topics in Statistics

Interests and Areas of Research

Data Analysis, Statistical modeling, Survey sampling, Missing data, Record linkage and administrative data, Bayesian methods, Hierarchical models, Confidentiality, and Teaching Statistics

Professional Experience

2017-present, Professor of Mathematics and Statistics, Saint Michael’s College

2019-2025, Chair of Mathematics and Statistics, Director of Data Science

2015-2017, Chief Statistician, Diabetes Prevention Program Outcomes Study (DPPOS)

2009-2017, Department of Statistics and Biostatistics Center, Graduate Certificate Program in Survey Design and Data Analysis, George Washington University

2008-2010, Executive Editor, Chance Magazine; 2011-present, Advisory Editor

2003-2009, Department of Statistics and Center for Survey Statistics & Methodology, Iowa State University

1999-2003, Department of Statistics and National Opinion Research Center, The University of Chicago

1997-1999, Department of Statistics, Harvard University

1996-1997, Department of Statistics, Stanford University

Various summers, Mathematical Statistician, U.S. Census Bureau

1995 – present, Statistical Consultant

Research

SELECT PUBLICATIONS 2019 – 2023

Klebanoff, M.A., Schuit, E., et al., Weiner, S., and Larsen, M.D. (2023). Antibiotic treatment of bacterial vaginosis to prevent preterm birth: Systematic review and individual participant data meta-analysis. Paediatric and Perinatal Epidemiology, 37(3): 239-251. PMID

Larsen, M.D., and Herning, A. (2023). Record Linkage for Establishments: Background, Challenges, and an Example. Advances in Business Statistics, Methods and Data Collection. Chapter 33: 757-780. Snijkers, G., et al. (editors). Wiley.

Chun, A.Y., Larsen, M.D., Durrant, G., and Reiter, J.G., Editors. (2021). Administrative Records for Survey Methodology. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Bosley, W., Haynes, B., Larsen, M., Perkins, T.D., and van den Berg, A. (2021). Yields from early tapping and taphole “rejuvenation” strategies. Maple Digest.

Mahshie, J.J., and Larsen, M.D. (2021). Contrastive stress production by children with cochlear implants: Accuracy and acoustic characteristics. Journal of the Accoustical Society of America Express Letters, 11(1): 115201.

Lachin, J.M., Bebu, I., Larsen, M.D., and Younes, N. (2019). Closed Testing Using Surrogate Hypotheses with Restricted Alternatives. PLoSONE, 14(7): e0219520.

Wang, J., Larsen, M., Dhanireddy, P., Prince, C., Pearman, G., and Schimpf, M. (2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021). Survey of Veteran Enrollees’ Health and Use of Health Care. Survey Methodology Report.

Interview

I was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, and attended Lincoln East High School, where I played cello, studied German, and competed in debate. For college I attended Harvard. I played cello in the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra and studied math, Russian, a bit of statistics, and a liberal-arts mix of topics. I remained at Harvard for graduate school in statistics during which time I worked summers at the U.S. Census Bureau. My doctoral dissertation was on statistical mixture models and their estimation with application to record linkage problems at Census and a Harvard psychology study on infants (clustering based on responses to novel stimuli). While at The University of Chicago as a senior lecturer, I met my wife Alice. We moved to Iowa and Maryland before coming to Vermont in 2017. We have three children, Lily, Chelsea, and Max, and live in Essex. My wife and I had brief experiences in Vermont before we knew each other, but our first encounter with the state together was through a small statistics workshop on total survey error in Stowe. Subsequently my children have attended Farm & Wilderness camps in Plymouth for several summers. I joined SMC in 2017. Statistics and Data Science degree were first available in 2018.

Honors and Service (a selection)

Saint Michael’s College

  • Dean’s Council of Chairs and Directors, 2019-2025
  • Faculty Council, 2023-2025
  • Dispute Resolution Committee, 2023-2025
  • Faculty Welfare Committee (FWC), 2020-2022
  • Retirement Review Committee, 2020-2022
  • Budget Review Committee (BRC), 2019-2022

American Statistical Association, lifetime member

  • Chair, Record Linkage Interest Group, 2023
  • Session Organizer, Joint Statistical Meetings, most recently 2023
  • Roundtable presenter, Joint Statistical Meetings, most recently 2023
  • President, Washington Statistical Society, 2016-2017
  • Chair, Survey Research Methods Section, American Statistical Association, 2016
  • ASA Fellows Committee, 2015-2017
  • Fellow, American Statistical Association, 2012
  • Program Chair, Survey Research Methods Section, American Statistical Association, 2012
  • Education Officer, Survey Research Methods Section, American Statistical Association, 2009-2011
  • Council of Sections Representative, Survey Research Methods Section, American Statistical Association, 2006-2008

National Science Foundation, Measurement, Methodology, and Statistics Review Panel, 2021-2023

National Institutes of Health, Biostatistical Methods and Research Design Study Section Review Panel, 2013-2016

Distinguished Scholar, U.S. Census Bureau, 2012

President, Sigma Xi chapter at George Washington University, 2011-2014

Elected Member, International Statistical Institute, 2010

National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Panel on Census 2010, 2009-2014; NAS Standing Committee on the Census, 2015-2017

Executive Editor, Chance Magazine, 2008-2010

Associate Editor, Annals of Applied Statistics, 2007 – 2017

Faculty Senate Representative, Department of Statistics, Iowa State University, 2007-2009

Liberal Arts & Sciences Assembly Representative, Department of Statistics, Iowa State University, 2006-2007

Recent News

Michael Larsen is coauthor and statistician on an article on treatment of nonsymptomatic bacterial vaginosis to prevent preterm birth (accepted in December 2022). In fall of 2022, he presented at the AAAS STEM symposium on Saint Michael’s College’s NSF S-STEM grant.  In 2023, he will be the chair of the Record Linkage Interest Group of the American Statistical Association. (posted February 2023)

Michael Larsen, chair of mathematics and statistics, served on the National Science Foundation Advisory Panel for the Methodology, Measurement, and Statistics (MMS) Program. The MMS Program is an interdisciplinary program that supports fundamental work on the development of methods for the social and behavioral sciences. Also, Michael was elected Chair-elect of the new Record Linkage Interest Group (RLIG) of the American Statistical Association. He will be chair-elect in 2022, chair in 2023, and past-chair in 2024. The RLIG aims to bring together individuals interested in deterministic and probabilistic record linkage, entity resolution, data fusion, and statistical matching. He and coauthor James Mahshie of George Washington University had a paper entitled “Contrastive stress production by children with cochlear implants: Accuracy and acoustic characteristics” by the Journal of the Accoustical Society of America. (posted February 2022)

Michael Larsen, professor & chair of mathematics & statistics, is a co-editor of the book Administrative Records for Survey Methodology (Wiley), scheduled to appear in 2021. He was guest co-editor of a special issue on data integration (Statistics in Transition, journal of the Polish Statistical Society) in August of 2020. He is principal investigator on “Methods for missing data in dental research studies” funded by the National Institutes of Health through the Vermont Biomedical Research Network and “Developing a Quantitatively Strong Life Sciences Workforce,” funded by the National Science Foundation. He continues to be an advisory editor for Chance and an associate editor for Annals of Applied Statistics. He contributed to the 2020 Survey of Veteran Enrollees’ Health and Use of Health Care findings report and survey methodology report (2020). He is coauthor with Robert Carlson of “Investigation of methods of handling late returns in the IRS Statistics of Income sample” (2020). (posted February 2021)

Mike Larsen, co-chair of Mathematics and Statistics, was awarded a pilot research grant from the Vermont Genetics Network, funded by the National Institutes of Health, to research missing data methods as applied to dental research studies. Mike had previously collaborated with his brother, Dr. Charles Larsen, a pediatric dentist, assistant professor, and resident director at Stony Brook University, on research projects focused on underserved populations. The project research plan includes involvement of an undergraduate research assistant from Saint Michael’s College. Mike also is engaged in evaluating statistical methodology for the Statistics of Income (SOI) Division of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Survey of Income and in reviewing confidentiality considerations in database publications by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), an agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). (posted June 2020)

Mike Larsen, co-chair of the Department of Mathematics & Statistics, coauthored one peer-reviewed paper on hypothesis testing methods in PLoSONE and two reports to the U.S. Veterans Administration on their 2019 health enrollee survey. He continues as associate editor of Annals of Applied Statistics and will be an assistant guest editor for a special volume on data integration of Statistics in Transition, the journal of the Polish Statistical Society. He was nominated and will stand for election to the American Statistical Association’s Council of Chapters Governing Board and its Board of Directors. (posted February 2020)

Michael Larsen of the Saint Michael’s Mathematics and Statistics faculty in recent months: reviewed student papers for the New England Statistical Society’s IBM Student Research Paper competition; refereed articles for statistical journals Biometrika, Annals of Applied Statistics, and Bayesian Analysis; collaborated as a senior statistician for the Veteran’s Administration surveys on Disaster Preparedness of VHA Employees and on Veteran Enrollee’s Health and Health Care Utilization; and, he provided comment on statistical disclosure limitation of low income non-itemized returns in the IRS Survey of Income research file. (posted June 2019)

Michael Larsen, professor of mathematics and statistics, gave a talk entitled “Statistical methods for an individual patient data meta-analysis” at University of Vermont in November. The talk was given in April of 2018 at the University of Norwich as well.  Michael also was coauthor on technical statistical reports to three government agencies: one to the U.S. Veterans’ Administration and two to the IRS Statistics of Income Division. The titles of the reports were “2018 Survey of Veteran Enrollees’ Health and Use of Health Care. Survey Methodology Report. Contract No. VA245-17-C-0178. Prepared by Advanced Survey Design, Monterey, CA; September 6, 2018”; second, “Application of multivariate masking and enhanced subsampling to the 2014 individual tax model public use — le. Report to Internal Revenue Service, Statistics of Income Division; November 15, 2018”: and finally, “Data and Analytic Solutions, Inc. (2018). IRS-SOI variance estimation formula certification suggestions and notes on alternative methods. Statistical Consulting Service TIRNO-17-D-00013 Task Order 0001.” For this report, Michael was bot statistician and primary author. In other career news, Michael joined the Education Committee of the New England Statistical Society, continued to serve as associate editor for the Annals of Applied Statistics and advisory editor for Chance magazine; and served via teleconference on the Panel to Review, National Survey of Early Care and Education (NSECE) 2019: The Provider and Workforce Study, sponsored by the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation (OPRE), Administration for Children and Families. NORC (December 8, 2017; August 4 and 6, 2018). (posted January 2019)

Michael Larsen, professor of mathematics and statistics, advises PhD student Yuan Li, who passed his final oral PhD exam at George Washington University. Michael was Li’s PhD advisor in the George Washington Department of Statistics. Michael also was appointed to the Education Committee of the New England Statistical Society, and continues to serve as advisory editor to Chance magazine, associate editor of the Annals of Applied Statistics, and frequent reviewer for ad hoc journals, publishers, and granting agencies. (posted June 2018)