Each year, the ASA recognizes all members reaching a milestone of 35, 40, 45, or 50 years of membership.
The February issue of TAS examines the asymptotic behavior of the Bayes factor for comparing two models. The Statistical Practice section, Teacher’s Corner, and History Corner are also featured.
Janet Wittes was leaning toward a major in biochemistry at Radcliffe College until faculty mentor John Edsall noted her preference for inference and guided her to statistics. In 1970, with two toddlers in tow, Wittes and her husband—physician Robert E. Wittes—moved to Bethesda, Maryland, where she worked part time as a postdoctoral researcher with Jerome Cornfield at The George Washington University and he served in the USPHS Commissioned Corps as a Yellow Beret. She founded a consulting firm, Statistics Collaborative, in 1990 and remains its president.
Alyson G. Wilson’s interest in statistics grew out of a summer internship in the clinical statistics department of Burroughs Wellcome, a pharmaceutical company in North Carolina. This was the first time she understood how math could be applied to real-world problems. Today, she is a professor in the department of statistics and associate vice chancellor for national security and special research initiatives, and her work has contributed to improving the use of data and quantitative methods in defense.