Leo Goodman

Leo Goodman

Class of 1938 Professor
Research Interests
Statistical methods of research, mathematical demography, mathematical sociology, social mobility

Professor Leo Goodman graduated from Syracuse University with an A.B. degree, summa cum laude, in mathematics and sociology; and he received M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Princeton University in mathematics, with special emphasis in mathematical statistics. He was a faculty member at the University of Chicago until 1986 in the Statistics Department and the Sociology Department. He served there as the Charles L. Hutchinson Distinguished Service Professor from 1970 to 1986. Starting in 1986, he became a faculty member in the Sociology Department and the Statistics Department at the University of California at Berkeley, where he is the Class of 1938 Professor.

Goodman was also at Cambridge University in 1953-54 and 1959-60 as a Visiting Professor at Clare College and in the Statistical Laboratory, and at Columbia University in 1960-61 as a Visiting Professor in the Department of Sociology and the Department of Mathematical Statistics. He was also at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, in Stanford, California, in 1984-85. He has received a Special Creativity Award from the National Science Foundation, and he has also received awards and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Fulbright Commission, the Social Science Research Council, and the National Science Foundation. The University of Michigan conferred the honorary degree Doctor of Science on him, and another honorary degree was also conferred on him by Syracuse University.

Goodman is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. He is also the recipient of various other honors and awards from the American Statistical Association, the American Sociological Association, and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, including the Samuel S. Wilks Memorial Medal presented by the American Statistical Association, and the Career of Distinguished Scholarship Award presented by the American Sociological Association. He has also received the Samuel A. Stouffer Award from the American Sociological Association, the R.A. Fisher Lectureship from the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies, and the Henry L. Rietz Lectureship from the Institute of Mathematical Statistics.

The research work that Goodman has done has been concerned with a wide variety of statistical problems, and also with the development of a wide variety of statistical methods for the analysis of data that are of interest in the social and behavioral sciences. He has published approximately 150 articles and four books. His more recent research has been focused mainly on the further development of statistical methods that bring the same kind of rigor to the analysis of qualitative/categorical data that has been available in the analysis of quantitative data.

The honors and awards received by Goodman recognize his contributions to statistics, both theoretical and applied, and to the development of new statistical methods for the analysis of social science data, especially the kind of qualitative/categorical data typically obtained via survey research. The honorary degree Doctor of Science, which was recently conferred on him by the University of Michigan, was for "his major contributions to statistics and social and behavioral sciences, and in particular for his development of new methods for the analysis of survey data as a sophisticated branch of statistical science...He has had a profound impact on methods of statistical analysis used in the social and behavioral sciences. In particular, he has had a most important role in elevating the analysis of survey data from an art form to a rigorous branch of statistical science. His work has fundamentally transformed quantitative research methods in the social sciences, particularly in sociology, by providing a set of interrelated statistical tools that enable researchers to examine qualitative/categorical data with scientific rigor. His introduction and further development of these and related tools have led to revolutionary changes in the methods now used in social science research involving categorical data."

Representative Publications

Published Articles and Chapters

2009 "David Gale: The man who had a special love affair with mathematics," Games and Economic Behavior, Vol. 64 .

2009 "A conversation with Leo Goodman," Statistical Science, Vol. 24.

2008 "To split or not to split the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals: A simple statistical argument, counterargument, and critique," Journal of Statistical Planning and Inference, Vol. 138, pp. 2681-2687.

2007 "Statistical Magic and/or Statistical Serendipity: An Age of Progress in the Analysis of Categorical Data," Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 33, pp 1-19. This article is the leading article in this Annual Review.

2007 "On the Assignment of Individuals to Latent Classes," Sociological Methodology, edited by Yu Xie. Boston, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Volume 37, pp. 1-22. This article is the leading article in this volume.

2007 "Otis Dudley Duncan, Quantitative Sociologist Par Excellence: Path Analysis, Loglinear Methods, and Rasch Models," Social Stratification and Mobility, Vol. 25, pp. 129-139.

2007 "Working with Bill Kruskal: From 1950 Onward," Statistical Science, Vol. 22, pp. 269-272.

2002 "Latent Class Analysis: The Empirical Study of Latent Types, Latent Variables, and Latent Structures," Applied Latent Class Analysis, edited by Jacques A. Hagenaars and Allan L. McCutcheon, pp. 3-55, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. This article is the leading article in this book.

2002 "How to analyze survey data pertaining to The Time Bind, and how not to analyze such data," Social Science Quarterly, Vol. 83 , p. 925.

2002 "Contributions to the statistical analysis of contingency tables: Notes on quasi-symmetry, quasiindependence, log-linear models, log-bilinear models, and correspondence analysis models," Annales de la Faculté des Sciences de l’Université de Toulouse, Mathématiques, Vol. 11, p. 525.

2001 "Statistical methods and graphical displays for analyzing how the association between two qualitative variables differs among countries, among groups, or over time. Part II: Some exploratory techniques, simple models, and simple examples," (with Michael Hout), Sociological Methodology, Vol. 31 (2001), edited by Michael E. Sobel and Mark P. Becker, Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers. Washington, D.C.: American Sociological Association, p. 189.

2000 "The analysis of cross-classified data: Notes on a century of progress in contingency table analysis, and some comments on its prehistory and its future," Statistics for the Twenty-First Century, edited by C.R. Rao and Gabor J. Szekely, New York: Marcel Dekker, Inc., 2000, p. 189.

1998 "Statistical methods and graphical displays for analyzing how the association between two qualitative variables differs among countries, among groups, or over time: A modified regressiontype approach" (with Michael Hout), with Discussion, Sociological Methodology, Vol. 28 (1998), edited by Adrian E. Raftery, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers, p. 175.

1998 "Understanding the Goodman-Hout approach to the analysis of differences in association and some related comments" (with Michael Hout). Rejoinder to comments on "Statistical methods and graphical displays for analyzing how the association between two qualitative variables differs ..." by Leo A. Goodman and Michael Hout, Sociological Methodology, Vol. 28 (1998), edited by Adrian E. Raftery, Cambridge, Massashusetts: Blackwell Publishers, p. 249.

1997 "The association between husband's and wife's occupations in Norwegian two-earner families: Birds of a feather flock together" (with G.E. Birkelund), Society, University, and World Community, Essays for Ørjar Øyen, edited by Sigmund Grønmo and Bjørn Henrichsen, Oslo, Norway: Scandinavian University Press, 1997, p. 136.

1997 "Statistical methods, graphical displays, and Tukey's ladder of re-expression in the analysis of nonindependence in contingency tables: Correspondence analysis, association analysis, and the midway view of nonindependence," The Practice of Data Analysis: Essays in Honor of John W. Tukey, edited by David R. Brillinger, Luisa T. Fernholz, and Stephan Morgenthaler, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1997, p. 101.

1996 "A single general method for the analysis of cross-classified data: Reconciliation and synthesis of some methods of Pearson, Yule, and Fisher, and also some methods of correspondence analysis and association analysis," Journal of the American Statistical Association, Vol. 91 (1996), p. 408.

1996 "The latent structure of job characteristics of men and women" (with G.E. Birkelund and D. Rose), American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 102 (1996), p. 80.

1994 "On quasi-independence and quasi-dependence in contingency tables, with special reference to ordinal triangular contingency tables," Journal of the American Statistical Association, Vol. 89 (1994), p. 1059.

1993 “Correspondence analysis, association analysis, and generalized nonindependence analysis of contingency tables: Saturated and unsaturated models, and appropriate graphical displays," Multivariate Analysis: Future Directions 2, edited by C.M. Cuadras and C.R. Rao, Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Elsevier, 1993, p. 265.

For a complete list of publications please see the Curriculum Vitae