PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Howard Friedman

Also known as Howard Steven Friedman, Howard S. Friedman

Howard Steven Friedman is a statistician and data scientist whose research brings machine learning and applied statistics to health economics. After a master's in statistics and a 1999 PhD in biomedical engineering at Johns Hopkins, he was a director of modeling at Capital One and formed the consultancy Analytic Solutions in 2003. For the United Nations, he was lead developer of health costing tools such as the Integrated Health Model, worked on the OneHealth Tool, and led UNFPA's Adolescent Investment Case work, published in 2019. His books include Measure of a Nation (2012), Ultimate Price (2020) on how lives are priced, and Winning with Data Science (2024), a handbook written with Akshay Swaminathan that warns managers against starting with an LLM or a deep learning tool before naming the problem. He is an Adjunct Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health and also works at UNFPA.

Timeline

  1. 1998–1999

    A Johns Hopkins PhD

    He earns a master's in statistics in 1998 and a PhD in biomedical engineering from Johns Hopkins University in 1999. His thesis traces how object color is represented in the visual cortex, using neurophysiological recordings from awake, behaving monkeys.

  2. By 2003

    Capital One and Analytic Solutions

    As a director of modeling at Capital One, he leads teams of statisticians, analysts and programmers in operations and marketing. He leaves in 2003 to form Analytic Solutions LLC, a consultancy for designing, developing and modeling data, and later serves as chief data scientist for DataMed Solutions LLC.

  3. June 2012

    Measure of a Nation

    Prometheus Books publishes his book Measure of a Nation in June 2012. It compares the United States with thirteen competitive industrial nations to find practices America could adopt, and Jared Diamond names it the best book of 2012 in a New York Times interview.

  4. By 2014

    Costing tools for the UN

    Working with UN agencies, he becomes lead developer of the Integrated Health Model, used to cost the health-related Millennium Development Goals, and of UNFPA's Reproductive Health Costing Tool. His UNFPA work also includes the OneHealth Tool and the Impact40 toolkit, and he serves as Secretariat of the UN Working Group on Costing. In 2014, he is a visiting researcher at Oxford University's Department of Economics.

  5. 2014–2019

    Investment cases for health

    In April 2014, he coauthors a Lancet paper setting out a Global Investment Framework for women's and children's health. He leads the technical side of UNFPA's investment cases, including the Adolescent Investment Case work published in the Journal of Adolescent Health in 2019.

  6. May 2020

    Ultimate Price

    University of California Press publishes Ultimate Price: The Value We Place on Life in May 2020. The book explains how economists and data scientists at corporations, regulatory agencies and insurance companies put price tags on human lives, and it is translated into numerous languages.

  7. 2024

    Winning with Data Science

    Columbia Business School Publishing releases Winning with Data Science: A Handbook for Business Leaders, written with Akshay Swaminathan, in January 2024; it walks managers through each step of a data science project. In April 2024, he teaches a Johns Hopkins Odyssey course on the book. In a May 2024 Q&A, the authors warn that starting with a tool such as an LLM or a deep learning application before naming the problem leads to a mismatch of problem and solution.

  8. As of October 2026

    Adjunct professor at Columbia Mailman

    He is an Adjunct Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, where his research covers machine learning, applied statistics and health economics. He also works at UNFPA and teaches statistics, program evaluation and machine learning courses at Columbia.

  1. Google had the most people shaping AI every year from 2014 to 2025Our estimates of which organizations employed the most people shaping AI from 1961 to 2025, with a year-by-year chart.
  2. The United States employs an estimated 53% of people in our data with a known employment countryOur estimates of where AI careers are concentrated now and how countries’ shares of dated positions changed over time.
  3. 46% of living people in our data with known birth and employment countries work outside their birth countryOur estimate of cross-border careers in AI, from country of birth and the country of each current organization.
  4. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionOur estimates of where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led, from education records in cited biographies.

Sources and credits

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  1. Howard Friedman - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org. Checked 19 October 2026.
  2. Howard Friedman who.int. Checked 19 October 2026.
  3. Howard Friedman | Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health publichealth.columbia.edu. Checked 19 October 2026.
  4. Howard Steven Friedman – statistician, economist, author, artist howard-friedman.com. Checked 19 October 2026.
  5. Ultimate Price by Howard Friedman - Hardcover - University of California Press ucpress.edu. Checked 19 October 2026.
  6. Winning with Data Science | Columbia University Press cup.columbia.edu. Checked 19 October 2026.
  7. Winning with Data Science with Howard Friedman, PhD | Johns Hopkins Events events.jhu.edu. Checked 19 October 2026.
  8. Howard Friedman and Akshay Swaminathan on Winning with Data Science - Columbia University Press Blog cupblog.org. Checked 19 October 2026.