Dianne Cook

Dianne Cook is a prominent Australian statistician and Professor of Business Analytics in the Department of Econometrics and Business Statistics at Monash University, located in Melbourne, Australia. She is recognized for her expertise in data visualization, high-dimensional data analysis, and exploratory data analysis.

Educational Background

Dianne Cook grew up in Wauchope, New South Wales, and pursued her undergraduate studies at the University of New England, where she earned a BSc and a Diploma of Education in 1982. She later obtained her MS in 1990 and her PhD in 1993 from Rutgers University. Her doctoral dissertation focused on "Grand Tour and Projection Pursuit," supervised by Andreas Buja and Javier Cabrera.12

Career Highlights

Cook began her academic career at Iowa State University in 1993, where she remained until moving to Monash University in 2015. During her tenure at Iowa State, she supervised notable students including Hadley Wickham and Yihui Xie. At Monash, she continues to contribute significantly to the field of statistics and data science.12

She is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association and served as the editor of the Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics from 2016 to 2018. Her research interests encompass a wide range of topics including statistical computing, data mining, and artificial intelligence.23

Research Contributions

Dianne Cook has been involved in several innovative projects that leverage crowd-sourcing techniques for data visualization research. Her work often aims to bridge the gap between statistical inference and exploratory graphics. Notable applications of her research include studies on climate change, educational testing, gene expression analysis, and sports statistics.24

Professional Affiliations

In addition to her role at Monash University, Cook is an elected member of the R Foundation and has been actively engaged in developing open-source software for statistical graphics.34 Her contributions to academia are complemented by her involvement in various research projects that address complex data visualization challenges.

Dianne Cook's extensive background in statistics and her commitment to advancing the field through research and education make her a key figure in business analytics and statistical science.