Home Page for Professor Jessica Utts

Department of Statistics

University of California, Davis

Professor Jessica Utts, Department of Statistics at the University of California, Davis. I am also the Director of the Davis Honors Challenge, the campus-wide honors program for UC Davis. Photo courtesy of Robert Knight

Contact Information

Professor Jessica Utts Department of Statistics One Shields Avenue University of California Davis, CA 95616

Phone:530-752-6496 Fax: 530-752-7099 Department Office: 530-752-2361 Email: Office location: 4214 Mathematical Sciences Building Department office: 4118 Mathematical Sciences Building

Major Current Administrative and Service Roles (with links)

• Director, Davis Honors Challenge, University of California, Davis
• Chair, Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies (COPSS)
• Chair, Section on Statistical Education, American Statistical Association
• Member, Committee on Council Affairs (Council Executive Committee), American Association for the Advancement of Science
• Member, Board of Directors, Parapsychological Association

Recent Presentations

• 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 and Recent Classes

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