Michael Gordon
ANALYTICS LEAD
PhD (Statistics), MASTER OF ANALYTICS (BUSINESS), BBUS (Economics)
Michael has over a decade of experience in consulting and applied research, working across local and central government, infrastructure agencies, and private sector organisations including retailers, property developers, and NGOs.
Most of his work supports regional and local decision-making, helping councils, government agencies and private organisations answer specific questions about growth, land use, infrastructure and investment. Michael focuses on his analysis being theoretically robust, evidence backed and usable and practical.
Michael specialises in regional and local economic forecasting, input-output and multi-regional modelling, demographic and migration projections, housing needs assessment, and spatial analysis and GIS. On the technical side, he works across statistical inference, machine learning, time series analysis, and is an experienced user of Statistics NZ’s IDI. Michael builds systems in R that are reproducible, well-documented and designed to be used, not just delivered. That includes a wide range of interactive Shiny dashboards and client-facing applications that allow direct access to modelling outputs and data.
Most of the problems Michael works on do not fit neatly into economics or data science alone and many of the forecasting and economic modelling projects require a combination of disciplines. Michael has the skills and knowledge to know which tools to reach for, how to make them work together to produce something that fits clients’ needs, and how to communicate complex ideas in a way that is intuitive and easy to understand.
Michael holds a PhD in Statistics and formal qualifications in Economics, remains connected to the research community through ongoing collaboration on forecasting methodologies and the reliability of published analytical findings.
Email: michael@formative.co.nz
Phone: 021 053 6287
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