About Me
I am Mike Hunter: currently a third-year graduate student in the Quantitative Psychology program at The University of Virginia. I'm working in the Human Dynamics Laboratory where Dr. Steven M. Boker is my primary advisor. I sought bachelor's degrees in Mathematics and in Psychology from Michigan State University, and am now pursuing these interests further in graduate school. This page discusses who I am and what I do.
Research Interests
Facial Expressions
The human face provides rich information about the affective state of an individual. Many researchers have investigated this link; however, relatively few have explored it dynamically by actively examining how the face moves instead of the static expressions it makes.
Many researchers are collaborating on this project, including Steve Boker, Tim Brick, Jeff Spies, and Jeff Cohn.
Personality Structure
Some people feel that the study of personality culminated in the Big Five; others disagree. I'd like to investigate mathematical structures that shed like on how we behave.
OpenMx: Free Statistical Software
I'm one of the Alpha Testers for the OpenMx Project. The Mx statistical software, written by Michael Neale is a statistical package for doing Structural Equation Modeling. The OpenMx project takes that software and makes it Open Source, extensible, and generally ready for the next twenty years of statistics. I am one of the early testers for this software, finding bugs and making suggestions on behalf of the new users.
Differential Equations
In many fields of science, differential equations are the fundamental level of description: in electromagnetism, Maxwell's Equations; in meteorology (or fluid dynamics more properly), the Navier-Stokes Equations; in population dynamics, the Lotka-Volterra Equation; and so on. Whatever the reason, differential equations have been noticeably absent in the study of psychological behavior.
Group Theory
Teaching
Undergraduate TA
In the Spring of 2009 I was a review TA for the second course in the undergraduate quantitative methods sequence.
Graduate TA
In the Fall of 2009 and the Spring of 2010 I was a teaching assistant with Minhong Yu of the graduate quantitative methods sequence. Minhong and I design laboratory lectures and exercises, met with students, graded assignments, and wrote exams.
Seminars and Workshops
I have held workshops on LaTeX and on structural equation modeling in OpenMx.