The Best Statistical Software Award recognizes individuals for developing statistical software that makes a significant research contribution.
| 2021 Winner | |
| Software | fastLink |
| Developers |
Ted Enamorado (WUSTL)
Kosuke Imai (Harvard)
Ben Fifield (ACLU Legal Analytics Group)
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Citation |
The Statistical Software Award Committee is pleased to announce fastLink by Ted Enamorado (WUSTL), Kosuke Imai (Harvard), and Ben Fifield (ACLU Legal Analytics Group) as the winner of the 2021 Society for Political Methodology Statistical Software Award. fastLink solves a common problem faced by researchers in political science as well as across the social sciences: merging multiple datasets that do not share unique record identifiers. This problem arises when linking data between surveys and administrative data, among multiple survey rounds, when connecting historical to modern administrative units, and in many other situations. Most applied work relies on manual or ad hoc merging of non-exact matches or deterministic algorithms, none of which can be used to quantify the amount of error in the merge. |
| Selection committee |
Nick Beauchamp (Northeastern), Graeme Blair (UCLA), Clayton Webb (Kansas), and Sarah Bouchat (Northwestern, Chair) |
Past Recipients
| Year | Developers | Software |
| 2020 |
Kenneth Benoit
Kohei Watanabe
Haiyan Wang
Paul Nulty
Adam Obeng
Stefan Müller
Akitaka Matsuo
|
quanteda |
| 2019 |
Graeme Blair (UCLA)
Jasper Cooper (Princeton)
Alexander Coppock (Yale)
Macartan Humphreys (Columbia and WZB Berlin)
Clara Bicalho (WZB Berlin)
Neal Fultz (Comake)
Lily Medina (WZB Berlin)
Aaron Rudkin (UCLA)
Luke Sonnet (UCLA)
|
DeclareDesign |
| 2018 |
Molly Roberts (UC San Diego)
Brandon Stewart (Princeton)
Dustin Tingley (Harvard)
|
stm: An R package for Structural Topic Models |
| 2017 |
Matias D. Cattaneo (Michigan)
Sebastian Calonico (University of Miami)
Max H. Farrell (Chicago)
Michael Jansson (Berkeley)
Xinwei Ma (Michigan)
Rocio Titiunik (Michigan)
Gonzalo Vazquez-Bare (Michigan)
|
RD Software Packages |
| 2016 |
Jirka Lewandowski (Berlin Social Science Center, WZB)
Sven Regel (Berlin Social Science Center, WZB)
Nicolas Merz (Berlin Social Science Center, WZB)
Pola Lehmann (Berlin Social Science Center, WZB)
|
Manifesto Project |
| 2015 |
Dustin Tingley (Harvard)
Teppei Yamamoto (MIT)
Kentaro Hirose (Princeton)
Luke Keele (Penn State)
Kosuke Imai (Princeton)
|
mediation: R Package for Causal Mediation Analysis |
| 2014 |
James Honaker (Harvard)
Gary King (Harvard)
Matt Blackwell (University of Rochester)
|
Amelia II |
| 2013 |
Andrew Martin (Washington University, St. Louis)
Kevin Quinn (UC Berkeley)
Jonghee Park (Seoul National University)
|
MCMCpack |
| 2012 |
Walter Mebane (Michigan)
Jasjeet Sekhon (UC Berkeley)
|
Genoud |
| 2011 |
Norman Nie (Stanford)
Dale Bent (Athabasca University)
Hadlai Hull (SPSS Inc.)
|
SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) |
| 2010 |
Jeffrey Dubin (Pacific Economics Group)
Doug Rivers (Stanford)
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|
| 2009 |
Keith Poole (UC San Diego)
Howard Rosenthal (NYU)
|
NOMINATE |
Past Selection Committees
| Year | Committee |
| 2020 | Nick Beauchamp (Northeastern), Graeme Blair (UCLA), Clayton Webb (Kansas), and Sarah Bouchat (Northwestern, Chair) |
| 2019 | Sarah Bouchat (Northwestern), Dustin Tingley (Harvard), and Adam Glynn (Emory, Chair) |
| 2018 | Jeffrey Arnold (University of Washington), Sarah Bouchat (Northwestern), Adam Glynn (Emory, Chair) |
| 2017 | Arthur Spirling (NYU, Chair), Justin Esarey (Rice) and Jamie Monogan (Georgia) |
| 2016 | Mike Ward (Duke), Matt Blackwell (Harvard), Alexander Tahk (Wisconsin) |