Faculty & Staff

Cassandra Pattanayak

Jack and Sandra Polk Guthman '65 Director, Quantitative Analysis Institute; Lecturer in Quantitative Reasoning and Mathematics

A.B., A.M., Ph.D., Harvard University

Statistician specializing in causal inference; creating the Quantitative Analysis Institute, to expand the role of statistics at Wellesley.

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Jessica Polito

Lecturer in the Quantitative Reasoning Program

B.A., Harvard University; Ph.D., University of California (Berkeley)

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Corrine Taylor

Senior Lecturer in the Quantitative Reasoning Program ; Director, Quantitative Reasoning Program

B.A., College of William and Mary; M.S., Ph.D., University of Wisconsin (Madison)

Leading efforts to improve quantitative reasoning, teaching QR and economics of education, and providing professional development for secondary school teachers.

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QR in Professions

Chefs use quantitative tools to plan schedules, balance costs against value of ingredients, and monitor nutritional value of meals.
From Mathematics and Democracy

QR in Professions

School administrators deal regularly with complex issues of scheduling, budgeting, inventory, and planning - all of which have many quantitative dimensions.
From Mathematics and Democracy

QR in Professions

Journalists need a sophisticated understanding of quantitative issues (especially risks, rates, samples, surveys, and statistical evidence) to develop an informed and skeptical understanding of events in the news.
From Mathematics and Democracy

QR in Academic Fields

The social sciences rely increasingly on statistical analysis of data from surveys and censuses or from historical or archeological records.
From Mathematics and Democracy

QR in Professions

Social Workers need to understand complex state and federal regulations about income and expenses to explain and verify their clients' personal budgets.
From Mathematics and Democracy

QR in Academic Fields

Advances in scientific understanding of the brain have transformed psychology into a biological science requiring broad understanding of statistics, computer science, and other aspects of quantitative literacy.
From Mathematics and Democracy

QR in Professions

Architects use geometry and computer graphics to design structures, statistics and probability to model usage, and calculus to understand engineering principles.
From Mathematics and Democracy

QR in Professions

Lawyers rely on careful logic to build their cases on subtle arguments about probability to establish or refute "reasonable doubt".
From Mathematics and Democracy

QR in Professions

Doctors need both understanding of statistical evidence and the ability to explain risks with sufficient clarity to ensure "informed consent".
From Mathematics and Democracy

QR in Academic Fields

The study of language has been influenced by quantitative and logical methods, especially in linguistics, concordances, and the new field of computer translation.
From Mathematics and Democracy

QR in Academic Fields

The stunning impact of computer graphics in the visual arts (film, photography, sculpture) has made parts of mathematics, especially calculus, geometry, and computer algorithms, very important in a field that formerly was relatively unquantitative.
From Mathematics and Democracy

QR in Academic Fields

Medicine requires subtle understanding of statistics (to assess clinical trials), of chance (to compare risks), and of calculus (to understand the body's electrical, biochemical, and cardiovascular systems).
From Mathematics and Democracy

QR in Academic Fields

Interpretation of historical events increasingly depends on analysis of evidence provided either by numerical data (e.g., government statistics, economic indicators) or through verification and dating of artifacts.

QR in Academic Fields

Biology requires computer mathematics (for mapping genomes), statistics (for assessing laboratory experiments), probability (for studying heredity), and calculus (for determining rates of change).
From Mathematics and Democracy

Faculty & Staff

Cassandra Pattanayak

Jessica Polito

Corrine Taylor