William Swain Cleveland II (born 1943) is an American computer scientist and Professor of Statistics and Professor of Computer Science at Purdue University, known for his work on data visualization, particularly on nonparametric regression[1] and local regression.
[3] Cleveland obtained his AB in Mathematics mid 1960s from Princeton University, where he graduated under William Feller.
For his PhD studies in Statistics he moved to Yale University, where he graduated in 1969 under Leonard Jimmie Savage.
[6] His research interests are in the fields of "data visualization, computer networking, machine learning, data mining, time series, statistical modeling, visual perception, environmental science, and seasonal adjustment.
"[7] Cleveland is credited with defining and naming the field of data science, which he did in a 2001 publication.