Jim Cochran

In the sixth installment of the Amstat News series of interviews with ASA presidents and executive directors, we feature a discussion with 2003 ASA President J. Stuart (Stu) Hunter.

J. Stuart Hunter is a statistician and professor emeritus in the school of engineering and applied science at Princeton University. He earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering in 1947, a master’s degree in applied mathematics in 1949, and a PhD in statistics in 1954—all from North Carolina State University. He is the founding editor of Technometrics and, in 1993, he served as president of the American Statistical Association. He is a fellow of the American Statistical Association, American Society for Quality, Royal Statistical Society, and American Association for the Advancement of Science. Hunter became an honorary member of the American Society for Quality in 1999 and he was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2005.

The first “Stu Hunter Research Conference” was held in 2013 at the Chateau Marquette, in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The second of these conferences was held in Phoenix, Arizona, in 2014, and the third was held in March of 2015 in Leuven, Belgium.

Hunter is a highly decorated statistician. He received the Shewhart Medal in 1970, U.S. Army S. S. Wilks Medal in 1987, Deming Medal in 1986, and Founders Award of the American Statistical Association in 1995. He also has been honored with the W.J. Youden, Ellis Ott, and Brunbaugh awards of the American Society for Quality. He received an honorary degree from his alma mater in 2006 and again in 2008 from The Pennsylvania State University. In 1996, the Environmetrics Society established an annual lecture in his honor.

Hunter has published extensively and is a co-author with I. Guttman and S. S. Wilks of Introductory Engineering Statistics (1965) and co-author with
G. E. P. Box and W. G. Hunter of Statistics for Experimenters (1979). In 1968, he was the instructor in the 32 one-half hour episode TV course “The Design of Experimenters with Structured Text” and, in 1971, a similar program, “Statistics for Problem Solving and Decision Making,” all sponsored by Westinghouse Learning. He remains active as a consultant and lecturer.

Q: Stu, thank you for taking time for this interview. You earned your undergraduate degree in electrical engineering and you master’s degree in engineering mathematics, but then studied statistics for your doctorate. What factored into your decision to move into the field of statistics?

A: In 1940, after graduating from high school, I worked for the Prudential Insurance Company as junior clerk, and I ended up in its actuarial department working with IBM punch cards. Later, while in the Army, I took engineering courses at North Carolina State University and took calculus from R. L. Anderson. After the war, I returned to NC State to finish a degree in electrical engineering and found Andy (Professor Anderson) in the statistics department. My formal statistics education began then and there.

Q: What motivated you and George Box to write Statistics for Experimenters?

A: I had the good fortune to be one of George’s first (of two) graduate students—Sigurd Andersen the other. There was great interest in fractional factorial and response surface designs, and I had many opportunities to give short courses and lectures. This included 32 half-hour TV tapes sponsored by Westinghouse Learning and later, when I was elected to the National Academy of Engineering, I was declared to be the “Johnny Appleseed” of industrial experimental design. When George returned to the USA to head up the Statistical Techniques Research Group at Princeton, it seemed the most logical thing in the world to have a book. Bill Hunter, who was then an undergraduate student at Princeton, was a great help in getting mimeo copies made for a course on design of experiments that both George and I gave in the chemical engineering department. When Bill later went to Wisconsin to work on his PhD, he became a natural added author.

Q: You were the founding editor of Technometrics. What motivated you to establish this journal? Who else worked on the founding of Technometrics?

A: A lot of early conversations at the Gordon Conferences argued the need for a statistics journal for the engineering sciences. Cuthbert Daniel and George were particularly avid advocates. My many short courses for the Chemical Division of the ASQC had fattened its treasury, and launching a technical journal seemed a natural use for this resource. While a graduate student at NC State, I had occasionally helped Sarah Porter and Gertrude Cox proofread and edit early issues of Biometrics, and I just selected myself to be the editor. R. A. Fisher named the journal Technometrics.

Q What accomplishment as president of the ASA did you find most gratifying?

A: I initiated the drive to establish certification for statisticians while president. The motion to begin certification was tabled at the last meeting of my presidential year. Serious family illness forced me to be absent.