Adam Cunningham has had a varied career working as a software engineer, math educator, and statistician. He first worked for Ford Motor Company in England as a knowledge engineer with their expert systems group, and then spent several years in Japan as a software engineer working with Fujitsu on graphical software development tools. After a career break full-time parenting his two children, he retrained as a mathematician and taught mathematics at the University at Buffalo for several years. More recently he has been working as a statistician doing modeling and data visualization to support a medical research team in Buffalo.
Why did you decide to go into Statistics/Statistics Education?
I’d been interested in statistics for a long time and had read a lot of popular books over the years such as “The Theory That Would Not Die” on the history of Bayes’ Rule, “The Signal and the Noise” by Nate Silver, and “Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk” by Peter L. Bernstein. Statistics touches on every corner of our lives and is such a powerful tool for trying to understand the world. We all have our own experience, but I think that statistics is vital for seeing the big picture.
I also like statistics because it stands at the intersection of the pure models of mathematics and the messiness of the real world. When I was doing a math degree, probability theory was my favorite subject, so after a few years of teaching I started taking some classes in statistics just for fun and professional interest. I ended up getting drawn in more and more, starting off taking a couple of classes, then signing up for a graduate certificate, to finally going all in and taking an MA in Biostatistics. The mathematical training really helped though and made the shift to statistics a (relatively!) easy one.
What's a class/workshop at your workplace/university that you wish you could take and why?
If I had the time, I would take some classes in econometrics, applying statistical modeling to historical real-world data to develop and test hypotheses in economics. There are a lot of big questions being argued about in this area right now, such as whether or not (and by how much) income inequality has increased in the US in recent decades. It would be a fascinating area to be involved in. Unfortunately, I need to live to be at least 200 to do all the things I’m interested in.
What do you enjoy doing when you’re not working?
I took five years of high school French and started learning it again during the pandemic after a very long break. I’m now a board member and the treasurer for the local Alliance Française, which is a French educational and cultural association. We have big plans and just started renting a space in the theater district in Buffalo for holding classes and events, which is the first time that Buffalo has ever had a dedicated French cultural center. As you can imagine, this is taking up all of my spare time right now.
I also make furniture from scratch, felling and milling the tree, drying and dimensioning the lumber, basically doing the whole process from start to finish. Making something physical is a good antidote to spending too much time in front of the computer.