Professor David Firth FBA
MA (Cambridge), MSc, DIC, PhD (London)

David Firth works on statistical theory, methods and computation, and applications in many disciplines, especially the social sciences.

He is a member of the management team of the Warwick/EPSRC Centre for Research in Statistical Methodology (CRiSM). Other recent activities have included co-directorship of the EPSRC Academy for Ph.D Training in Statistics, chairing the Research Section of the Royal Statistical Society, and membership of the ESRC Research Grants Board and the National Statistics Methodology Advisory Committee. He is a former Editor of the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society (Series B, Statistical Methodology). In 2008 he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy. In 2012 he was awarded the Guy Medal in Silver.

David came to Warwick in 2003 from Oxford, where he was Professor of Social Statistics.

Current research topics:

• inference and computation for generalized nonlinear models (with Heather Turner and Ioannis Kosmidis);
• inference and computation for complex random-effects models (with Cristiano Varin and Heather Turner);
• models of competition and the analysis of pair-comparison data (with Manuela Cattelan, Cristiano Varin and Heather Turner);
• penalized likelihood methods, especially for modelling discrete data (with Ioannis Kosmidis).

Some recent publications:

Cattelan, M, Varin, C and Firth, D (2013). Dynamic Bradley-Terry modelling of sports tournaments. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society C 62, 135–150.

Turner, H and Firth, D (2012). Bradley-Terry Models in R: The BradleyTerry2 Package. Journal of Statistical Software 48(9), 1–21.

Firth, D (2011). On improved estimation for importance sampling. Brazilian Journal of Probability and Statistics 25, 437–443. (PDF download )

Kosmidis, I and Firth, D (2011). Multinomial logit bias reduction via the Poisson log-linear model. Biometrika 98, 755–759. (Preprint available as CRiSM research report 10-18)

Varin, C, Reid, N and Firth, D (2011). An overview of composite likelihood methods. Statistica Sinica 21, 5–42. (Preprint available as CRiSM research report 09-45)

Kuha, J and Firth, D (2011). On the index of dissimilarity for lack of fit in log-linear and log-multiplicative models. Computational Statistics and Data Analysis 55, 375–388.

Kosmidis, I and Firth, D (2010). A generic algorithm for reducing bias in parametric estimation. Electronic Journal of Statistics 4, 1097–1112

Kosmidis, I and Firth, D (2009). Bias reduction in exponential family nonlinear models. Biometrika 96, 793–804.

Curtice, J and Firth, D (2008). Exit polling in a cold climate: The BBC/ITV experience in Britain in 2005 (with discussion). Journal of the Royal Statistical Society A, 171, 509–539.

Sergeant, J C and Firth, D (2006). Relative index of inequality: Definition, estimation and inference. Biostatistics 7, 213–224.

Whiting, M J, Stuart-Fox, D M, O'Connor, D, Firth, D, Bennett, N C and Blomberg, S P (2006). Ultraviolet signals ultra-aggression in a lizard. Animal Behaviour 72, 353–363.

Stuart-Fox, D M, Firth, D, Moussalli, A and Whiting, M J (2006). Multiple signals in chameleon contests: designing and analysing animal contests as a tournament. Animal Behaviour 71, 1263–1271.

Firth, D (2005). Some Topics in Social Statistics. In Celebrating Statistics: Papers in Honour of Sir David Cox on his 80th Birthday (eds. A C Davison, Y Dodge, N Wermuth). OUP.

Firth, D. and Menezes, R. X. de (2004). Quasi-variances. Biometrika 91, 65–80.

Firth, D. (2003). Overcoming the reference category problem in the presentation of statistical models. Sociological Methodology 33, 1–18.

Firth, D. (2003). CGIwithR: Facilities for processing web forms using R. Journal of Statistical Software 8(10), 1–8.

Wolfe, R. and Firth, D. (2002). Modelling subjective use of an ordinal response scale in a many period crossover experiment. Applied Statistics 51, 245–255.

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Election exit polls David's research work is behind the accurate exit-poll predictions that have been made at the last three UK general elections (in 2001, 2005 and 2010). For more details see exit polling explained.

Contact details:

• Personal email, d dot firth at warwick dot ac dot uk
• Head of Dept business (accessed also by Dept Secretary and Administrator), stats dot hod at warwick dot ac dot uk

Voice: 44 (0)247 657 2581
Fax: 44 (0)247 652 4532
PGP public key: df-key.txt