Home Page for Professor Jessica Utts

Department of Statistics

University of California, Irvine

Professor Jessica Utts, Department of Statistics at the University of California, Irvine. Until June 30, 2008 I was the Director of the Davis Honors Challenge, the campus-wide honors program for UC Davis. Click on the link for more information about DHC. NEW: Sabbatical house for rent, 9/15/2008 to 6/15/2009. Click here for more information. ANNOUNCEMENT: Effective July 1, 2008 I have moved to the Department of Statistics, UC Irvine. Photo courtesy of Robert Knight

Contact Information

Professor Jessica Utts Department of Statistics Donald Bren Hall University of California Irvine, CA 92697-1250

Phone: TBA Fax: Until Sept 12th: 530-752-7099; After Sept 12th: 949-824-9863 Department Office: 949-824-5392 Email: Office location: 2208 Donald Bren Hall, UC Irvine Department office: 2042 Donald Bren Hall, UC Irvine

Major Current Administrative and Service Roles (with links)

• Chair, Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies (COPSS)
• Past Chair, Section on Statistical Education, American Statistical Association
• Member, Board of Directors, Parapsychological Association
• Chair of the Board, Consortium for the Advancement of Undergraduate Statistics Education (CAUSE)

Recent Presentations

• Analysis of Milton Wiseman Meta-analysis, July 15, 2007, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
• WNAR New Researchers' Lunch, June 26, 2007, Irvine, CA
• Japanese Behaviormetrics Society, September 12, 2006, Tokyo, Japan
• Japan Joint Statistics Meeting, September 7, 2006, Sendai, Japan
• Stor Konferens om Parapsykologisk Forskning, Stockholm, Sweden, August 3, 2006
• GAISE Workshop/AMATYC, Nov 8&9, 2005
• CMCCC, Dec 2, 2005

Current Classes

Recent Classes (at UC Davis)

Fall 2007

• Statistics 108, Regression Analysis
• Statistics 390, Methods of Teaching Statistics

Fall 2006

• Statistics 13V, Web-based Statistics
• Statistics 390, Methods of Teaching Statistics

2005-2006

Sabbatical leave at the University of California, Irvine

Spring 2005

• Integrated Studies 8C, Testing Psychic Claims

Fall 2004

• Statistics 13V, Web-based Statistics
• Statistics 390, Methods of Teaching Statistics

Fall 2003

• Statistics 13V, Web-based Statistics
• Statistics 390, Methods of Teaching Statistics
• Integrated Studies 8C, Testing Psychic Claims

Spring 2003

• Statistics 10, Statistical Thinking
• Statistics 13, Elementary Statistics

Winter 2003 - no classes

Fall 2002

• Statistics 13V, Web-based Statistics
• Integrated Studies 8C, Testing Psychic Claims
• Statistics 290, Statistics Seminar
• Statistics 390, Methods of Teaching Statistics

Interesting Links

Parapsychology Links:

• Parapsychology researchers, labs, online experiments, etc
• Some research papers in Parapsychology
• Frequently Asked Questions about Parapsychology

Statistics Links:

• Causeweb: Consortium for the Advancement of Statistics Education (great resource!)
• My personal favorite! Provides links to hundreds of statistical calculators (by John Pezzullo)
• Examples and Information about Polls, Statistical Studies, etc. (by Bob Heckard)
• Ten Websites Every Statistics Instructor Should Bookmark (by Robin Lock)
• The Rice Virtual Lab in Statistics (by David Lane, Rice University)
• The Chance Website
• StatLib, a compendium of useful information about statistics departments, journals, etc.

My Curriculum Vitae

• Employment History
• Administrative Experience
• Awards, Activities and Grants
• Publications (Scroll down to "My Research Interests" on this page for links to some publications.)
• Word
• PDF

Where I Received my Degrees

• Bachelor of Arts in Math and Psychology at the State University of New York at Binghamton in 1973.
• Master of Arts (1975) and Ph.D. (1978) from the Department of Statistics at Penn State University

Places I Have Had Visiting Appointments

• Department of Statistics, Stanford University
• Koestler Chair of Parapsychology, University of Edinburgh
• Institut für Grenzgebiete der Psychologie und Psychohygiene (IGPP)
• SRI International, project now moved to Cognitive Sciences Laboratory

My Research Interests

I am interested in applied statistics, and have published most extensively on the use of statistics in parapsychology.
I am also interested in statistics education and literacy.
I have provided some of the most commonly requested papers here.

In the Fall of 1995 Professor Ray Hyman (University of Oregon) and I prepared a report assessing the statistical evidence for psychic functioning in U.S. government sponsored research. The report was part of a review done by the American Institutes of Research (AIR) at the request of Congress and the CIA. It received wide-spread media coverage.
My report and related reports:

• An Assessment Of The Evidence For Psychic Functioning (HTML)
• PDF Version  (Download Adobe Acrobat Reader to view .pdf files.)
• Rich text format version (download into a file and then read it into Word or WordPerfect 6.0 or higher.)
• Professor Hyman's report.
• Utts' reply to Hyman's report
• Response by Dr. Edwin May, the lead investigator for the government-sponsored work and Director, Cognitive Sciences Laboratory

"Replication and Meta-Analysis in Parapsychology."  (Statistical Science, with commentary by others) - summarizes some of the statistical evidence for psi phenomena that was available at the time the paper was written (1991).

Utts, Jessica (1999). The Significance of Statistics in Mind-Matter Research, Journal of Scientific Exploration, 13(4), 615-638.

"The Paranormal: the Evidence and its Implications for Consciousness"  published in the [London] Times Higher Education Supplement, Apr. 5th. 1996, page (v), with Nobel Laureate Brian Josephson

Utts, Jessica (2003). What Educated Citizens Should Know about Statistics and Probability, American Statistician, 57(2), 74-79.

My Books

Seeing Through Statistics, 3rd edition (2005), ISBN 0-534-39402-7

Mind On Statistics, 3rd edition (2007) by Jessica Utts and Robert Heckard, ISBN 0-534-99864X

Statistical Ideas and Methods, 1st edition (2006) by Jessica Utts and Robert Heckard, ISBN 0-049-512250-5

CyberStats, Jessica Utts, Editor-in-Chief

Last updated September 2007