Joint Ph.D. Program in Statistics and Public Policy

The Department of Statistics offers a joint program in collaboration with the H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management leading to a Ph.D. in Statistics and Public Policy. This five-year program provides students with comprehensive preparation at the Ph.D. level in both statistics and public policy. The curriculum draws on existing courses in both Statistics and the Heinz School, recognizing that selected courses can meet, simultaneously, the usually-separate objectives of the Ph.D. programs in Statistics and Public Policy.

Critical to the success of the joint program is the close collaboration among faculty members in Statistics and the Heinz School. While students will have separate faculty advisors in Statistics and in the Heinz School, their progress will be regularly assessed by a joint group of faculty.

The actual curriculum for any given student will be tailored to his or her interests and needs but the general strategy is similar: to meld the two sets of Ph.D. requirements into a coherent and useful set of courses, with similar core items. The first three semesters cover the basic courses for the M.S. in Statistics while simultaneously introducing the student to the core disciplines of the Heinz School. The next three semesters include required Ph.D. courses in Statistics, as well as methodology and policy seminar courses, and work on the second Heinz research paper, which also satisfies the Advanced Data Analysis (ADA) requirement in Statistics.

Typical Five-Year Curriculum for the PhD Program in Statistics and Public Policy

(*) 36-752: Advanced Probability Overview is a new P.D. level course under development that stresses the major ideas typically covered in a two semester course on probability theory. This course prepares students for 36-755: Advanced Statistics I. To prepare for 36:752 students who have not had a course in Real Analysis and Lebesgue Integration typically take our informal summer course on this topic.
(**) See the outline of the Ph.D. in Statistics for a description of the ADA Project. Normally students in the joint program in Statistics and Public Policy will combine the ADA project with a Heinz School research paper.

The Ph.D. dissertation research topic for a student in the joint program should deal with material of interest and relevance to both faculties, and the dissertation will thus be supervised jointly by a member from Statistics and Heinz. If the research is methodological in orientation it should have clear and demonstrable policy applications. If the thesis is primarily empirical and focused on a policy problem, the statistical analyses should be exemplary, meeting the standards of the Department of Statisitics.

There will only be a single thesis proposal and thesis defense. These will involve presentations to a joint group of faculty and students from the two separate programs, and the basic rules will resemble closely those used for Statistics proposals and dissertations.

If you are interested in this program, please indicate this on your application form. The Statistics Department and the Heinz School will coordinate review of your application.