About
Principles
Here are my core principles which guide my work and life:
- Useful. If it’s not useful, then what’s the point?
- Clear. Nothing frustrates me more than unnecessary complexity - especially if its intentional.
- Respectful. We don’t all share the same values, and beliefs. That’s a good thing.
- Resourceful. Real world decision making always involves constraints - wasted resources here could have been used elsewhere.
- Humble. I’ve been wrong before, and I’ll be wrong again.
Education
| Degree | Institution | Focus | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| B.A. | Grinnell College | Mathematics | Studying mathematics has always been one of my greatest pleasures. Grinnell’s Burling Library was my happy place |
| M.S. | Ohio University | Quantitative Psychology | |
| Ph.D. | University of Basel | Cognitive Psychology |
Work Experience
Here is a selection of my work experience. See my LinkedIn page for a more detailed history.
| Position | Institution | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Pre-Doctoral Researcher | Max Planck Institute for Human Development | Paradise for decision-making research thanks to Gerd Gigerenzer, Ralph Hertwig and where I discovered a love of R with my fellow PhD student Dirk Wulff |
| Postdoctoral Researcher | University of Konstanz | Developing FFTrees with Hansjoerg Neth and Wolfgang Gaissmaier was a turning point for the rest of my career |
| Postdoctoral Researcher | University of Basel | |
| Real World Data Scientist | Roche | Where I learned how real world science is done by teams and what a great manager looks like (thank you Robert Walls) |
| Quantitative Scientist | Flatiron Health | Best culture and teams I’ve ever been a part of. Grateful to people like Olivier Humblet, Caleb Jordan, Daniel Obeng, Conal Scanlon, John Zielinksi (and so many more) for teaching and supporting me during my time there. |
| CTO, Co-Founder | Plinth Analytics | The thrill of a lifetime with my co-founder and friend Kieran Mace, along with rockstar data scientists Nicole Mirea, Parker Barnes |
Presentations and Videos
Here are some presentations and recordings of me speaking at various conferences, as well as some teaching course materials.
| Title | Venue |
|---|---|
| FlatironKitchen: How we overhauled a Frankensteinian SQL workflow with the Tidyverse | RStudio Conf (2019) |
| FFTrees: An R package to create, visualise and use fast and frugal decision trees | useR! (2017) |
| Using R to Derive Robust Insights from Real-World Health Care Data | R/Pharma (2022) |
| TStat R Lecture #7: Loops in R | Introduction to R Programming course at the University of Konstanz (see all course videos here) |
Publications
Here are the two publications I’m most proud of, see all of them at Google Scholar
| Title | Authors | Journal | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| FFTrees: A toolbox to create, visualize, and evaluate fast-and-frugal decision trees | Phillips, N.D., Neth, H., Woike, J.K., Gaissmaier, W. | Judgment and Decision Making | |
| Rivals in the dark: How competition influences search in decisions under uncertainty | ND Phillips, R Hertwig, Y Kareev, J Avrahami | Cognition |
Open Source Projects
Most of my projects are proprietary, but here are some open source projects that I contribute to
| Title | Description | Status |
|---|---|---|
| FFTrees | A toolbox to create, visualize, and evaluate fast-and-frugal decision trees | Active |
| yarrr | A package for creating pirate plots in R | Active |