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Department of Statistics

Clifford C. Clogg Memorial Lecture

Dr. Clogg was nationally and internationally known for his work in quantitative methods and demography, particularly on the analysis of rates, standardization methods, and latent structure analysis. Contributions from friends and colleagues led to the creation of the Clifford C. Clogg Memorial Lectureship fund. The fund was endowed in 1996. Leo Goodman gave the inaugural lecture on September 27, 1996.

A native of Oberlin, Ohio, Clifford C. Clogg earned his B.A. in sociology from Ohio University in 1971, an M.A. in sociology and an M.S. in statistics in 1974, and his Ph.D. in sociology in 1977, all from the University of Chicago. He joined Penn State as an assistant professor of sociology in 1976 and rapidly moved through the ranks until he was designated a Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Professor of Statistics in 1990.

Dr. Clogg wrote extensively on the statistical analysis of categorical data, covering loglinear models, cohort analysis, association models, and mobility tables. His research had received continuous funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) since 1979. Dr. Clogg
served on the NSF advisory panel for the sociology program and on the NSF advisory panel for measurement, methods and statistics in the social sciences.

His honors included being named a Fellow of the American Statistical Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.  He was elected a member of the Sociological Research Association in 1987 and received the Paul F. Lazarsfeld Award from the Methodology Section of the American Sociological Association for his technical contributions to social research. He also received a Special Creativity Award from the National Science Foundation and a Significant Achievement Award from Ohio University.

Dr. Clogg provided considerable editorial service to the Journal of the American Statistical Association culminating in the coordinating and applications editorship (1989-1991). In addition, he was an active member of the American Sociological Association, the Population
Association of America, and numerous other professional societies.  This extraordinary level of external involvement did not keep Professor Clogg from being a key contributor to his two departments at Penn State. Besides fulfilling a double set of department duties, he
supervised a total of twelve master degree students and thirteen Ph.D. students in statistics and sociology. These students now hold a variety of positions in government and academe.

 

CLIFFORD C. CLOGG MEMORIAL LECTURESHIP IN
SOCIOLOGY AND STATISTICS DISTINGUISHED SPEAKERS

Year Speaker
2024

Dr. Guillermina (Willie) Jasso, New York University

April 2 & 3, 2024

  1. How Statistics Advances Sociology | 2. How Sociology Advances Statistics
2022

Jerry Reiter, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina

November 3, 2022, Penn State Main Campus, University Park, PA

2019

Michael Sobel, Columbia University, New York, NY

"Between Causation and Association: The Role of Sex, Race and Political Party in EEOC Litigation Outcomes, 1996-2006."

2018

Robert M. Groves, Georgetown University, Washington, DC

"Promoting Evidence-Based Policymaking at the National Level."

2017

Glenn Firebaugh, Pennsylvania State University

"Where does social change come from? Or, how to decompose almost anything."

2016

Mark Handcock, University of California, Los Angeles

"Some new models for social networks"

2014

Steven Morgan, Johns Hopkins University

"Clogg's Causal Inference Dilemma: Twenty Years in Search of a Resolution"

2013

Rod Little, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

"Partially Missing at Random and Ignorability for Inferences about Parameter Subsets with Missing Data"

2010

Ken Bollen, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

"Measuring the Unmeasurable:  Democracy, Depression, and Distance"

2008

Stephen E. Fienberg, Carnegie Mellon University

"Reflections on Latent-Class Modeling"

2007

Yu Xie, University of Michigan

"The Three Principles in Social Science"

2005

Susan A. Murphy, University of Michigan

"Meeting the Future in Managing Chronic Disorders: Individually Tailored Interventions"

2004

Thomas D. Cook, Northwestern University

"Towards a Practical Theory for Generalizing Causal Knowledge"

2003

Stephen Raudenbush, University of Michigan

"Assessing Neighborhoods: How Do We Do It and What Have We Learned?"

2002

Gary King, Harvard University

"Did Illegally Counted Overseas Absentee Ballots Decide the 2000 U.S. Presidential Election?"

2000/
2001

Christopher Winship, Harvard University

"Does Going to School Make You Smarter?  The Estimation of Causal Effects with Longitudinal Data"

1999

Adrian Raftery, University of Washington

"Statistical Inference for Deterministic Simulation Models: The Bayesian Modeling Approach"

1998

Alan Agresti, University of Florida

"A Twentieth Century Tour of Categorical Data Analysis"

1997

Donald B. Rubin, Harvard University

"A Template for the Analysis of Social Science ‘Encouragement’ Experiments with Application to the Milwaukee School Choice Study"

1996

Leo Goodman,  University of California at Berkeley

"The Empirical Study of Latent Types, Latent Variables and Latent Structures: An Introduction for the Untutored and Some Surprising New Results for the Enlightened"