Rate My Professor Paul Allison

Paul D. Allison is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, specializing in methodology and statistics in the social sciences. The primary goal of his research is to improve statistical methods for making causal inferences using non-experimental data, focusing on fixed effects methods to control for stable individual characteristics and advanced techniques for handling missing data such as multiple imputation and maximum likelihood estimation. His academic interests also encompass event history analysis, survival analysis, logistic regression, multiple regression, inequality in science, productivity differences among scientists, and the effects of marital dissolution on children. Allison received his A.B. magna cum laude from St. Louis University in 1970, M.S. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1973, and Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1976. His career began with a lectureship in the Department of Sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook (1975-1976), followed by assistant professor (1976-1980) and associate professor (1980-1981) positions at Cornell University. At Penn, he advanced from associate professor (1981-1987) to professor (1987-2018), chaired the Department of Sociology (2003-2007), and became professor emeritus in 2018. Since 2005, he has been President of Statistical Horizons LLC, where he offers workshops on advanced statistical methods.