About the Author

Sam L. Savage is an adjunct professor in Stanford University’s School of Engineering and a fellow of the Judge Business School at Cambridge University. He received a PhD in the area of computational complexity from Yale University in 1973, spent a year at General Motors Research Laboratory, and then joined the management science faculty of the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. Here he quickly realized that an algebraic curtain separated management from management science, and he abandoned the field. Then a decade later, with the advent of the personal computer and electronic spreadsheet, the algebraic curtain began to fall, and Sam was reborn as a management scientist. In 1985, he collaborated on the first widely marketed spreadsheet optimization package, What’sBest!®, which won PC Magazine’s Technical Excellence Award. In 1990 Sam came to Stanford, where he continues to teach and develop management science tools in an algebra-free environment.

His primary research focus is on enterprisewide communication and management of uncertainty and risk. In 2006, in collaboration with Stefan Scholtes (of Cambridge University) and Daniel Zweidler (then of Shell), Dr. Savage formalized the discipline of probability management as a means of storing uncertainties as auditable data, which could be used in stochastic calculations. He is the Executive Director of 501(c)(3) nonprofit ProbabilityManagement.org, which was incorporated in 2013 with the assistance of Harry Markowitz and Michael Salama. Sam is the inventor of the SIP, a standardized array of Monte Carlo trials and metadata for conveying uncertainty. Under Sam’s direction, the nonprofit has received funding from Chevron Corporation, General Electric, Kaiser Permanente, Lockheed Martin, Pacific Gas & Electric, Wells Fargo Bank, and other organizations. ProbabilityManagement.org’s open SIPmath™ Standard has been applied to model uncertainty in areas as varied as agriculture, healthcare, military readiness, and operational risk.

Sam has published in both refereed journals and the popular press, with articles in the Harvard Business Review, The Journal of Portfolio Management, Phalanx, the Washington Post, and ORMS Today. Sam also consults and lectures extensively to business and government agencies and has served as an expert witness.