# About the author {-}


**Jacob Kaplan** is a researcher at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. He holds a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. 

He is the author of several R packages that make it easier to work with data, including  [fastDummies](https://jacobkap.github.io/fastDummies/) and [asciiSetupReader.](https://jacobkap.github.io/asciiSetupReader/) His [website](http://jacobdkaplan.com/) allows easy analysis of crime-related data, and he has released over a [dozen crime data sets](http://jacobdkaplan.com/data.html) that he has compiled, cleaned, and made available to the public. He is also the author of books on the two primary criminal justice data sets: the FBI's [Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program Data](https://ucrbook.com/) and the FBI's [National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS)](https://nibrsbook.com/) data.