Leo Goodman, Who Transformed Sociology With Stats, Dies at 92 He developed tools for researchers to analyze categorical data, revolutionizing the study of poverty, income inequality and social mobility. He died of Covid-19. Leo A. Goodman devised statistical methods to analyze demographic data; his work had an immediate and lasting impact in areas like poverty and social mobility.Credit...via Goodman family Published Feb. 17, 2021Updated Feb. 18, 2021 This obituary is part of a series about people who have died in the coronavirus pandemic. Read about others . Until Leo A. Goodman began his work on statistics in the early 1950s, researchers in the social sciences had a problem. It was easy enough to quantify the relationship between two numerical measurements — say, how height correlates to income level. But what about nonnumerical categories, like race and occupation?