Jeff Rosenthal

Jeffrey Seth "Jeff" Rosenthal, FRSC, FIMS (born October 13, 1967, Scarborough, Ontario) is an award-winning Canadian statistician and author. He is a professor in the University of Toronto's Department of Statistics, cross-appointed with Department of Mathematics. He has written numerous research papers about the theory of Markov chain Monte Carlo and other statistical computation algorithms, many joint with Gareth O. Roberts. He received the CRM-SSC Prize in 2006, the COPSS Presidents' Award in 2007, the Statistical Society of Canada Gold Medal in 2013, and an Outstanding Teaching Award in 1998. He was elected a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics in 2005, and of the Royal Society of Canada in 2012.

In 2005 Rosenthal wrote a book for the general public, Struck by Lightning: The Curious World of Probabilities, which was a bestseller in Canada and has been published in nine languages. He has also written a graduate textbook on probability theory and co-authored an undergraduate textbook on probability and statistics. He has been interviewed by the media about such diverse topics as crime statistics, pedestrian deaths, gambling probabilities, and television game shows, and has appeared on William Shatner's Weird or What?.

In 2006, Rosenthal did the statistical analysis used by The Fifth Estate to expose the Ontario lottery retailer fraud scandal, which was debated in the Ontario provincial legislature. In 2010 his research with Albert H. Yoon about the U.S. Supreme Court was quoted in the New York Times. He has also written about the Monty Hall problem.

Rosenthal graduated from Woburn Collegiate Institute in 1984, received his B.Sc. (in mathematics, physics, and computer science) from the University of Toronto in 1988, and received his Ph.D. in mathematics from Harvard University in 1992 (supervised by Persi Diaconis). He performs music and improvisational comedy, including at The Bad Dog Theatre Company. He also supervises student projects.