Rate My Professor John A. Harraway

John A. Harraway serves as Honorary Associate Professor in Statistics within the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Otago. He earned his BSc (Hons) and MSc from the University of Otago. His career at Otago began as an assistant lecturer in mathematics, followed by appointment as lecturer in statistics by the university's inaugural Professor of Statistics, Geoff Jowett. Harraway delivered undergraduate statistics courses for 54 years across business, biological sciences, and biostatistics for medical, dental, pharmacy, and physiotherapy students, achieving a perfect attendance record with zero sick days over 50 years. Upon retirement, he was reappointed to his current honorary position, where he continues developing educational resources.

Harraway's research focuses on applied statistics and statistics education. Applied work includes analyses of iron deficiency in New Zealand infants, alcohol consumption patterns among pregnant women, multivariate trace element profiling for authenticating foods such as oysters, ginseng, and honey, sustainability attitude modeling among students, and population ecology studies on dolphin habitats and human interactions in New Zealand and Egypt. In statistics education, he created 20 motivational case study videos incorporating real data and R analyses, utilized in 30 countries with over 3,000 accesses; interactive apps for official statistics training for developing country governments; and training modules for the Indian Statistics Institute and UNITAR in Geneva. Notable publications comprise Parackal et al. (2009) in Drug & Alcohol Review on pregnancy alcohol safety perceptions; Harraway and Barker (2005) on statistics use in the workplace; and his 2022 conference paper on motivational videos. With over 1,050 citations, his contributions earned the 2010 University of Otago Teaching Excellence Award, 2013 NZSA Campbell Award, presidency of the International Association for Statistical Education (2011), election to the International Statistical Institute, and recent NZSA Life Membership. He also served as Chief Examiner for Statistics with the New Zealand Qualifications Authority and reviewed medical programs for the World Bank.