Matthew Kay

I am an Assistant Professor of Information at UMSI. I work in human–computer interaction and information visualization.
My research includes work on communicating uncertainty, usable statistics, and personal informatics. I tackle problems using a multi-faceted approach, including qualitative and quantitative analysis of behavior, building and evaluating interactive systems, and designing and testing visualization techniques.

Communicating uncertainty: We are increasingly exposed to sensing and prediction in our daily lives (“how many steps did I take today?”, “how long until my bus shows up?”, “how much do I weigh?”). Uncertainty is both inherent to these systems and usually poorly communicated. To build understandable data presentations, we must study how people interpret their data and what goals they have for it. This informs the way that we should communicate results from our models, which in turn determines what models we must use in the first place. More…

Usable statistics: Science is failing all around us! Nothing replicates! Things may not be as dire as all that, but in fields like HCI and psychology, the statistical tools we use are failing us: these tools let users wander around without guidance and produce results without assisting users in interpretation. What would usable statistical tools look like?