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Mike McLaughlin |
Sharing Knowledge with the World
Mike McLaughlin
March 2004
MITRE's Michael McLaughlin is recognized all over the world—by
people in Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru and also in The Philippines,
Vietnam, and Nepal. In fact, McLaughlin's work has fans and admirers
in thousands of pockets across the globe.
While McLaughlin is a well-regarded computer scientist at MITRE
working on navigation system technology, his world-wide distinction
comes from an activity he pursues after hours. He is the developer
of Regress+, a Macintosh application that facilitates the creation
of models for empirical data—both equations and probability
distributions—and the Compendium of Common Probability
Distributions, an award-winning, online encyclopedia of statistical
distributions appropriate for the modeling of random data. According
to Google, the Compendium is cited more often than any similar online
source. Both are freeware and available to anyone with Internet
access. While this might seem like Latin to non-statisticians, others
working with real data—scientists, engineers, and students—find
McLaughlin's offerings highly useful. In fact, the Compendium has
been accessed 57,000 times and Regress+ downloaded 29,000 times
worldwide.
"I had the idea, and I found it interesting," says McLaughlin,
who began working on his programs in 1998. "They're very mathematical,
very statistical. I've enjoyed creating something that people have
found useful."
This isn't the first time McLaughlin has given away his work to
the global community. He served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ghana
(1966-68) and later (1971-75) went back as a contract teacher working
for the same school system he had supported with the Peace Corps.
"I liked teaching chemistry," says McLaughlin, who had a B.Sc. and
M.Sc. degree in chemistry when he taught in Ghana, and later received
a Ph.D. in chemistry as well as a post-masters degree in computer
science. "The people were the nicest part of being there."
McLaughlin first joined MITRE as a chemist in 1980, having come
from Indiana University where he was an assistant professor of chemistry,
and worked in what was then MITRE's Environment Division on an assignment
assisting the Environmental Protection Agency. "Our work focused
on supporting the Toxic Substances Control Act, examining the procedures
used to oversee the safety testing of industrial chemicals." Later,
after beginning his studies in computer science, McLaughlin moved
to MITRE's Center for Advanced Aviation System Development (CAASD)
organization, the MITRE Center supporting the Federal Aviation Administration
(FAA) as its federally funded research and development center. While
wearing his CAASD hat, McLaughlin has worked on the Traffic Alert
and Collision Avoidance System, which helps prevent mid-air collisions,
and is currently working on the Global Positioning System-Wide Area
Augmentation System (GPS-WAAS), developing a simulation to help
the FAA determine how changes to system design will affect the availability
of WAAS service. "These studies started in MITRE, but influence
the real world. It's satisfying to work on something like that."
It's clear that McLaughlin is happiest when he has a full plate.
Even with his busy MITRE schedule, he's now working on the next
release of Regress+ and the next edition of the Compendium. "People
are waiting for them," he says. "It's nice to work on
products that are being used all around the world."
—by Nadine Monaco
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