Philip Aaron Yates, assistant professor at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, from 2007 to the present, has been named assistant professor of mathematics at Saint Michael's College starting this fall semester. Professor Yates earned his doctorate in statistics in 2006 from the University of South Carolina with a dissertation titled, “Methods for the analysis of Flood Frequency Distributions.”
Dr. Yates earned his B.S. degree in math with high honors from DePaul University in 1997, and earned the St. Vincent de Paul Award for Community Service that year, and served as a tutor and grader.
Dr. Yates earned an M.S. degree in biostatistics from the University of Vermont in 1999, and worked at UVM from 1999 to May 2004 as a graduate instructor in statistics, and was a graduate teaching fellow there from 1997 to 1999. He was also student statistician for the Biostatistics Program and Department of Orthopaedics & Rehabilitation at UVM from 1998 to 1999. At South Carolina, he was named the outstanding statistics graduate teaching assistant for 2001-02, and 2002-03.
Dr. Yates said he always saw himself at a liberal arts college, “where the students get to taste a bit of everything . . . and St. Mike’s fit the bill.”
“Saint Michael’s has many similarities to DePaul,” he said, “especially the idea of service and of giving back to the community, and this appeals to me very much,”
Professor Yates’ research interests include applying statistics to environmental science, biology, political science, and sports. In the fall, he will be teaching Elementary Statistics and Probability & Statistics; in the future he will be teaching a new course on Techniques of Regression & Linear Models. “Linear models,” he explained, “provide a way to try to establish some relationship between one variable and one or more other variables.” A simple example is using students’ heights and their shoe sizes to see if shoe size is a good predictor of height.
Dr. Yates is the recipient of a $270,000 grant from the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Forest Service, providing statistical services, and a grant from the same source for $2,500 for a project titled “Greater Yellowstone Area Snowmobile Use Monitoring Evaluation.” He is co-principal investigator on an $800,000 NSF grant over five years designed to increase Ph.D.-bound U.S. math baccalaureates.
Dr. Yates has published several articles in Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, most recently, one titled “Chasing DiMaggio: Streaks in Simulated Seasons Using Non-Constant At-Bats.” His article on “Point and Standard Error Estimation for Quantiles of Mixed Flood Distributions,” has been submitted to the Journal of Hydrology. He has papers on sports statistics and on elections in progress with a number of collaborators. He and four co-authors published a technical report,Ignition Potential of Muzzle-Loading Firearms for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service in 2009.
He is a member of the American Statistical Association, Mathematical Association of America, and the Society for American Baseball Research. And, he says, “I am a huge, huge baseball fan.” And he is also a big music fan, who taught himself to play the guitar using the geometry of the shapes of the chords. He said he looks forward to getting involved with Saint Michael’s student radio station WWPV.
A native of Springfield, Illinois, Professor Yates is the son of Bob and JoAnn Yates, residents of Springfield. Professor Yates and his wife Sarah Venuti Yates reside in Winooski, Vt.