Joshua Valor Snoke

Joshua Snoke is an associate statistician at RAND. His primary research focuses on novel estimation procedures when data are unavailable due to privacy restrictions. These methods seek to increase researchers’ ability to answer policy questions using hard to obtain data due to privacy concerns. He has expertise broadly in the field and have published papers on topics such as the release of synthetic datasets, the enabling of model estimation across multiple databases, and the creation of differentially private algorithms. Outside of privacy, he has worked on numerous projects evaluating programs and institutions for individuals’ outcomes. On the defense side, he works on manpower and personnel questions, such as evaluating marketing and recruitment strategies, evaluating predictors of success in enlisted personnel, and staffing models. His work, both privacy related and otherwise, has involved a variety of administrative datasets, such as from the U.S. Census Bureau, the UK Administrative Data Research Network, the U.S. Army Recruiting Command, and the American Educator Panels. His broader methodological interests include estimation, model selection, non-parametric modeling and classification, machine learning, and causal inference. He received his Ph.D. in statistics with a graduate minor in social data analytics from the Pennsylvania State University. He received his B.S. in mathematics and economics from Wheaton College.