Dan Bouk researches the history of bureaucracies, quantification, and other modern things shrouded in cloaks of boringness. He studied computational mathematics as an undergraduate, before earning a Ph.D. in history from Princeton University. His work investigates the ways that corporations and states have used, abused, and re-made the categories that structure our daily experiences of being human. His first book, How Our Days Became Numbered (Chicago, 2015), explored the life insurance industry's methods for quantifying people, discriminating by race, and thinking statistically. He teaches history at Colgate University.