Professor of the Practice in Quantitative Analysis Robert Kabacoff is well-known around the Quantitative Analysis Center (QAC) for his cheerful demeanor and deep knowledge of statistics and data analysis. As the author of three books and numerous websites, Professor Kabacoff has dedicated most of his professional life to educating people through technology. The Argus sat down with him to discuss his time here at the University, his plans after retirement, and some of the highlights of his career. 

The Argus: Do you have a favorite class out of all the ones you’ve ever taught?

Robert Kabacoff: I really like “[Introduction to] Machine Learning” (QAC385), but my favorite would have to be “Advanced R” (QAC356), because it’s small, it’s intimate, and you don’t get an opportunity for that a lot. It feels more like friends getting together to work on something than just a big lecture. And I really like that.

The goal of Advanced R was to give students [not only] more experience using R in solving real-world problems but some exposure to a sense of what it’s like to develop software for other people and also to give them projects that they could use to showcase their talents so that they could have something in their portfolio—that they could say, “This is something that I created in the data analysis sphere that other people can use.” 

A: How did you become a professor?

RK: I knew for a fact I didn’t want to be a professor. The plan was to be a clinical psychologist, and anyone getting a Ph.D. in clinical psychology has to do a year internship at a hospital or medical setting. I did mine at the Medical University of South Carolina, and [after] I finished my year of training, I knew absolutely that I did not want to be a therapist. I started looking around for jobs and an assistant professorship had opened at Clemson [University], which isn’t that far away from Charleston. I took it. I got in front of my first introduction to psychology class, with 150 students in an auditorium, and I loved it. Psychology has really interesting stories, and I just found that I really enjoyed telling them. Later on, I found out that I liked the students too. By then I was hooked, and from that point on, I wanted to be a professor.

A: How did you come to Wesleyan?

RK: I was teaching for 10 years in Florida in a graduate program and I got bored. I wanted to do something different, and I had never been outside the United States. An international job opened up at a consulting company in Maine that did organizational development, and they were looking for a vice president of research. It involved working with clients in Western Europe, Africa, and Asia, and that was very exciting. It was all about helping people become better leaders, and I’ve had a lot of experience with really bad leaders—bad leaders can really hurt a lot of people. So I took that job, and I did that for 20 years. 

Then I realized how much I missed teaching, and I was 60. I was sure I couldn’t change jobs at the age of 60. A job opened up at Wesleyan in the QAC and I was convinced that I would not get it, but my wife said, “Go ahead and apply,” and I did. I was shocked. For one thing, it turned out that they knew my work, and they used my book, so that was very helpful, I think. I came here, and this is the best job I’ve ever had. I love it here. I think Wesleyan is a wonderful place.

A: How long have you been working in data analysis? 

RK: 45 years. Since 1978. The first data analysis course I ever taught was in 1980. Most of the languages that I knew early in my career aren’t used anymore. I learned Fortran. I learned C, I did a lot of SPSS and SAS. I used Perl. I used Unix, which is now Linux. Nobody uses any of those anymore. Well, I mean, they use SPSS and SAS, but those have changed. I did my master’s thesis on punch cards. I remember the very first computers. 

The shift from hypothesis testing to machine learning approaches—from pure statistics to data science—is a huge shift. The impact of computers and simulation on research has changed everything. I would say 80% of what I teach in my courses I did not learn in graduate school. What we learned back then was not what is primarily used in research now, except in randomized experiments.

So, yeah, I was very active early on the internet. I remember the first time that the internet went commercial. I saw the first ad that was on the internet. I remember the first person that was arrested for spamming. Spamming was illegal at one point. In part I’m kind of glad that this is the time I’m retiring, because I’m going out at the apex of my career. I don’t know if I have the energy to learn this new revolution of AI because it’s going to change everything again.

A: You talked about one of your books. Could you tell me a bit more about some of the books you’ve published?

RK: So I’ve written three books. The first book I wrote, [“Evaluating Research Articles From Start to Finish”], was on how to read research articles. And that book basically talked about the different kinds of research there is and then used one published article and actually showed the whole article in each of those kinds of research, then broke down how to read it. There are examples of good articles and not so good articles. Probably the people that wrote the not so good articles are not happy with me. And then I wrote “R in Action,” and that went through three editions. Then just this year I wrote “Modern Data Visualization with R.”

A: What’s the process for writing books like these?

RK: I’ve been lucky that I was approached to write. I didn’t have to reach out and find editors and say, “Would you allow me to write a book for you?” I’ve had people come to me and say, “Would you write a book?” That was really nice. I actually started out with websites that I had created that attracted attention, and then editors came and saw that. It’s very different from publisher to publisher. For example, one publisher assigned me an editor who wanted to talk every week about what I was doing, and we talked every week for a year and a half. I had another publisher who basically said, “When you get it done, send it to us.” I sent it to them and they said, “Yeah, it looks really good,” and they published it. It usually takes me about a year to a year and a half for each book. I find it a very painful process. I really like having the results, but I found the process of making myself sit down and do it hard. The last book is 700 pages. I mean, that’s just a lot of text.

A: In your classes, you’ve talked to us a lot about different projects that you’ve done throughout your life. Do you have any that you think are your favorites or are really cool?

RK: Yeah, I’ve got two favorites. The first big project I did was early in the history of the internet, back around 1993. I created a website, [Interlinks], to help people that didn’t know what the internet was use the internet. It became very popular, and I got to know people in other countries, which wasn’t very heard of at that time. I aimed it a lot at people in schools, in colleges. It was both for faculty and for students. I was very proud of it. It had a lot of firsts. It competed with a number of the really big websites back then. It had the first international Happy New Year card, and people from all over the world would put in their wishes in their own language. Maybe five or six thousand people did it, which was a lot back then. It was a sweet time, and it got me really interested in educational technology. It doesn’t exist anymore. It’s probably on the internet archive.

The other one would be Quick R, a website that I created for people that wanted to learn R. It was created maybe 15 years ago, when R was becoming a popular language, but it wasn’t easy to learn. The way that people learned R back then was they read the help files, which is not a great way to learn R. So I created a website that was aimed at a researcher, and it was organized by what they would want to do. You know, how do I get my data into this thing? How do I summarize my data? How do I make graphs of my data? How do I do hypothesis testing? That kind of thing. That’s one of my favorites, because it became very popular, and I was using it to teach myself. It opened up a lot of doors, a lot of consulting opportunities. I did a lot of work that I wouldn’t have been able to do otherwise. It’s kind of my opus. 

I used to spend two weeks a year in Hawaii training anthropologists at JPAC. JPAC is the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Commission, and they’re responsible for identifying unknown soldiers. Two weeks a year I would go to Pearl Harbor, on Hickam Air Force Base, and train them in analytic techniques. That never would’ve happened without Quick R. 

What I’m finding is that what’s important is being first, not best. Quick R wasn’t the best website out there. It was just one of the first websites, and so it got really popular. Interlinks, which was my original internet thing—I’m not an artist, it wasn’t particularly beautiful or anything—but it was one of the five or six websites you could go to back in the 90s. It gave me a lot of opportunities.

A: You’re retiring at the end of the semester. How does it feel to be leaving?

RK: I am sad. I’m not aware of the sadness too much yet because I’m not thinking about it. A lot of people that retire know what they’re going to do. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I don’t know where I’m going to live. My wife retired a year ago. She’s a forensic psychologist, and I really want to spend more time with her. We’re very much in love, and we’ve been together 30 years. I want to be able to do things with her and travel with her. 

A: What are your plans for the future? 

RK: It’s up in the air. We’ll move someplace where it’s warmer and more sunny. I was raised in Connecticut, so it’ll be a change. We’ll travel and we’ll eat out a lot. I’ll probably open up a YouTube channel and record videos on various data science topics just to kind of keep my hand in it. I’m sure that I’ll create a website of some kind, because I’d always do that. Probably, the difference between previous ones and this website is it’ll have a lot more multimedia on it. I’m looking forward to it, slowly.

A: Do you have any favorite memories from your time here at Wesleyan?

RK: I’ve had a good time the whole time I’ve been here. I love Wesleyan. I really enjoyed going up to the telescope for the first time at [the Van Vleck Observatory], it’s a beautiful telescope, seeing Saturn. The faculty have a lot of guest speakers, and I’ve really enjoyed those. I came here from the business world, and they don’t talk about the kinds of things they talk about on an academic campus. They don’t talk about the history of the American Revolution, and they don’t talk about the role of art in cultural development, and things like that. That’s been really exciting. 

There was a time that a student drew this giant caricature of all the QAC faculty. It was in the QAC consulting area, in the lab, and he or she had taken a big whiteboard and drew all of us—me, and [Director of the Center of Quantitative Analysis] Manolis [Kaparakis], and [Associate Professor of the Practice in Quantitative Analytics] Pavel [Oleinikov], and [Professor of the Practice in Quantitative Analysis] Val [Nazzaro]. I really enjoyed that. And I just enjoyed the students—the smiling students make me feel very good. 

A: What do you do outside of Wesleyan for fun?

RK: Eat. I love going to new restaurants, especially if they’re outdoor cafes. [My wife] Carol Lynn and I travel around trying new places. We have a golden retriever named Annie who requires a great deal of attention, but she’s a sweetheart. We love taking her on trips that we think she’ll enjoy. I read a lot. I’m a violist. My wife is a violinist, but we haven’t played in a long time. One of the things I think we’ll do when we retire is start doing that again. 

A: How long have you been playing the viola?

RK: I’ve played since I was 10. I actually met my wife through music. She was carrying a violin and I got on an elevator and I was looking to be in a quartet, and that’s how we met. What I didn’t realize was the difference in our skill levels. I was first violist in Connecticut’s Allstate a long time ago, but she’s played Carnegie Hall, so she’s a very different level of violin than I am. When I found [that] out, I never played with her again, but I think that we’ll both probably start playing in retirement and maybe look for musical groups to connect with.

A: Is there anything that you want people reading this article to know about you?

RK: I’ll put in a plug for my wife here. Carol Lynn has her own career—she’s also a professional psychologist—but whatever accomplishments I can point to, she’s been a big part of all of those, her support, and her love, and her patience. Find somebody patient. Find somebody who thinks that your things that drive everybody else crazy are cute. All of my books are dedicated to her, and my career is too.

Also, I think that the students at Wesleyan are incredible. This is the fourth university I’ve taught at, and I just think that they’re amazing. There’s a real social justice, caring vibe here that’s very special.

 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Caleb Henning can be reached at chenning@wesleyan.edu.