Howard Wainer

Howard Charles Wainer (born October 26, 1943)

Education Early on Wainer showed an aptitude for science and mathematics. In 1960, at the end of his junior year in high school, he was accepted into a National Science Foundation honors program at Columbia University. He spent two hours traveling on subway and bus each way to and from Columbia, learning about Markov chains and number theory in the morning and working on the IBM 650 computer in the afternoon. Wainer received his B.S. from R.P.I. in mathematics in 1965 and a Ph.D. from Princeton in psychometrics in 1968.

Career Howard Wainer began his teaching career at Temple University in 1968, staying on as an assistant professor until 1970. After Temple he taught at the University of Chicago, as a member of the Committee on Methodology in the department of Behavioral Sciences until 1977. Wainer then moved to Washington, D.C., to join the Bureau of Social Science Research, a nonprofit organization that focused on policy research. During his time in DC Wainer also joined with Richard Roistacher and Barbara Noble in founding Multiple Technical Services, a small firm that provided statistical and computational advice to the DC research community. In 1980 he moved to Princeton NJ to become a principal research scientist at the Educational Testing Service, a position he held for 21 years. In 2001 he assumed the position of Distinguished Research Scientist at the National Board of Medical Examiners, from which he retired on December 2, 2016. Wainer was also an adjunct professor of statistics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania from 2002 until 2013. Graphic Discovery and Visual Revelations he was also responsible for the English translation of two of the masterworks in the field by the French semiologist Jacques Bertin.

Wainer’s approach to the study of graphics has always shown a deep respect for the work of those who had preceded him. In 2007 he arranged for the publication of replica volumes of William Playfair's Atlas as well as his Statistical Breviary, the first books on the subject. In them he collaborated with Ian Spence on an extended introduction to Playfair and a biography of him.

Wainer has done extensive work on problems in psychometrics. He has authored, co-authored or edited the principal texts in five of the major areas of the subject: test scoring, test validity, computerized adaptive testing, test fairness, and, most recently, on a theory of testlets.

Wainer has published more than 450 articles, chapters and books. His latest book Truth or Truthiness explains how to use evidence to debunk baseless claims. Since 1990 Wainer has written the popular column “Visual Revelations” for Chance magazine. Wainer edited the Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics from 2002 through 2004 as well as being an associate editor of a handful of statistical and psychometric journals. He is currently on the Board of Editors of Significance, the new joint publication of the American Statistical Association and the Royal Statistical Society.

He has also served on the front lines of educational practice by working for many years as a consultant for teachers’ unions, with a five-year hiatus when he served on the Princeton Board of Education. He has also served, in many capacities, as a consultant and advisor to government and industry.

Selected publications

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