Favorite Professors and Harvard Statistics

Once a year, every graduating senior at Harvard is asked to nominate his/her favorite professor (out of all courses taken over the preceding four years). The Harvard Yearbook staff tallies up all the votes, and then invites the winning professors to submit a letter to their students to appear in the yearbook. The staff selects approximately 45-50 professors each year (out of all faculty members teaching in a total of 37 undergraduate departments).

By the way in which nominations are collected, one expects the larger departments to prevail, since smaller departments (like the Statistics Department) have fewer faculty members in the pool. This follows from the limitation that a senior can select at most one professor's name for consideration.