Glenn Firebaugh is an American sociologist (born: Charleston, West Virginia) and leading international authority on social science research methods. Currently he is the Roy C. Buck Distinguished Professor of Sociology (Emeritus) at the Pennsylvania State University. He has also held regular or visiting faculty appointments at Harvard University, Vanderbilt University, Oxford University, and the University of Michigan. Firebaugh is best known for his contributions to statistical methods and for his research on global inequality. In 2018 he received the Paul F. Lazarsfeld Award from the American Sociological Association for "a career of distinguished contributions to the field of sociological methodology." His publications are highly cited by other social scientists. Career and education Glenn Firebaugh attended graduate school at Indiana University at Bloomington where he received his M.A. in 1974 and Ph.D in 1976, both in sociology with a minor in econometrics, and mathematical models. He then joined Vanderbilt University in 1976 as an Assistant Professor, and then advanced to Associate Professor in 1982. He joined Pennsylvania State as a Full Professor in 1988 and was the head of the Department of Sociology from 2001-2004. He advanced to Distinguished Professor in 2006. From 1995-1996 Firebaugh was deputy editor and 1997 to 1999 he was the editor of the American Sociological Review. Major contributions Rules for Social Research Firebaugh summarizes the principles for good research in his book Seven Rules for Social Research. The first rule is that "There should be the possibility of surprise in social research." Good research also will "look for differences that make a difference" (Rule 2) and "build in reality checks" (Rule 3). Rule 4 advises researchers to replicate, that is, "to see if identical analyses yield similar results for different samples of people" (p. 90). The next two rules urge researchers to "compare like with like" (Rule 5) and to "study change" (Rule 6); these two rules are especially important when researchers want to estimate the effect of one variable on another. The final rule, "Let method be the servant, not the master," reminds researchers that methods are the means, not the end, of social research; it is critical from the outset to fit the research design to the research issue, rather than the other way around. Firebaugh's general equation for inequality indices Inequality indices are scalar measures designed to quantify the degree of inequality in distributions of some valued good, such as income. Researchers often