November 10, 2021

Professor Ray Chambers elected as a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences

Honour a recognition of his contribution to development of statistical methodology

Professor Ray Chambers has been elected as a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia in honour of his nationally and internationally recognised contributions to the development of statistical methodology, particularly in the areas of modelling and analysis of sample survey data and in the application of statistical methods to social and official statistics.

An Honorary Professorial Fellow with the National Institute for Applied Statistics Research Australia (NIASRA) in the School of Mathematics and Applied Statistics, Professor Chambers was one of a select group of 37 leading economists, lawyers, psychologists, philosophers and other social scientists elected as Fellows.

Professor Chambers’ research has spanned a wide range of applications in the design and analysis of sample surveys, including methodology for small sample inference from surveys and on issues related to the analysis and modelling of data collected in complex surveys, particularly likelihood-based methods for modelling the complex data structures that arise when data obtained from auxiliary sources, particularly by linkage to administrative registers, are integrated with sample survey data in analysis.

“A defining characteristic of my research has been on applying foundational principles for statistical inference to real survey data analysis problems, including problems associated with the analysis of survey data that have been probabilistically linked to auxiliary data sources and the integration of multiple sources of auxiliary information into survey data analysis.” Professor Chambers said.

“My most recent research addresses the use of statistical methods for causal inference in the context of mitigation of the effects of climate warming, focusing on rainfall enhancement via orographic uplift of ionized aerosols, and on government programs designed to encourage revegetation of degraded farming land.”

In addition to publishing numerous influential research papers, Professor Chambers has jointly authored two books. Maximum Likelihood Estimation for Sample Surveys (Oxford University Press, 2012) provides a rigorous development of how maximum likelihood methods should be defined when applied to sample survey data. An Introduction to Model-Based Survey Sampling with Applications (Oxford University Press, 2012) is one of the very few sample survey texts that offers a comprehensive and integrated model-based approach to sample survey inference.

President of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia Professor Jane Hall congratulated the new Fellows on their election.

“These new Fellows are at the forefront of social research and policy, and they have made enormous contributions to our society as a whole,” she said.

“It is an honour to have these individuals as new Fellows of the Academy.”

The social sciences are concerned with the functioning and structure of society and include the disciplines of anthropology, demography, geography, linguistics, sociology, management, accounting, economics and economic history, marketing, statistics, history, law, philosophy, political science, education, psychology, and health sciences.