Phillip Kott

Phillip S. Kott (born 1952) is an American statistician. He has worked in the field of survey statistics for more than 25 years, and is regarded as a leader in this field. His areas of expertise include survey sampling design, analysis of survey data, and calibration weighting, among other areas. He revolutionized sampling design and estimation strategies with the Agricultural Resource Management Survey, which uses survey information more efficiently. He has taught at George Mason University, and USDA Graduate School.^[1] He is currently an Associate Editor for the Journal of Official Statistics and the scientific journal Survey Methodology.^[2]

Early professional years

Phillip Kott earned his BS in Mathematics from The State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1974. In 1975, Kott received his MA in Economics from Brown University. In 1978, Kott received his PhD in Mathematical Economics from Brown University at age 26. He was recruited as an economist by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in November 1978 and worked there until 1984 when he was hired by U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).^[3] In 1987, Kott began working for the National Agricultural Statistics Service of USDA, where he remained until 2008; he briefly worked at the Census Bureau in 1990.

Current professional activities

At the time of his retirement in 2008, Kott was the chief research statistician at NASS. He continued to work part-time at Nass through December 2010. Since January 2009, Kott has been a senior research statistician at Research Triangle Institute (RTI).^[4]

Notable achievements

In 1996, Kott was elected a Fellow of ASA. Kott has been an organizer of a number conferences and sessions at national and international statistical organizations and has been a representative to the Council of Chapters of ASA. He served as the president of the Washington Statistical Society from June 1996 to June 1997. In 1997, Kott was awarded the Distinguished Achievement Medal by American Statistical Association's Section on Statistics and the Environment. Most recently, he received the Presidential Rank Award in 2007.^[5]

Select bibliography

Books edited

Kott is a co-editor of Business Survey Methods (1995), a collection of papers from diverse researches regarding the process of conducting statistical surveys.^[6]

Papers published

Kott has written or calaborated on hundreds of papers advancing the science of survey methodology. He is a sought after speaker at international statistical forums and has had a major influence on the way the U.S. Government conducts survey research. The following are five of Kott's most influential and important published papers:^[7]

• Kott, P., & Chang, T. (2010). Using calibration weighting to adjust for nonignorable unit nonresponse. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 105, 1265-1275.
• Kott, P., & Liu, Y. (2009). One-sided coverage intervals for a proportion estimated from a stratified simple random sample. International Statistical Review, 77, 251–265.
• Kott, P. (2006). Using calibration weighting to adjust for nonresponse and coverage errors. Survey Methodology, 133–142
• Kott, P. (2001). The delete-a-group jackknife. Journal of Official Statistics, 521–526.
• Kott, P., & Stukel, D. (1997). Can the jackknife be used with a two-phase sample? Survey Methodology, 81–89

References

Further reading

• Using calibration weighting (2006)
• One-sided coverage intervals (2009)
• Using calibration weighting (2010)