Dear Editor,
It is disappointing to note that no one in “Members Reveal Why They Have Remained with ASA for Three Decades” (Amstat News, June 2013) mentioned what I think is the overriding motive for an individual to become a member of the American Statistical Association or any other professional organization. The reason must be the one Francis Bacon (1561–1626) epitomizes so well in the following quotation:
I hold every man a debtor to his profession, from the which as men of course do seek to receive countenance and profit, so ought they of duty to endeavour themselves by way of amends to be a help and an ornament there-unto.
This passage appears on the inside cover of each issue of The Mathematical Gazette, a publication of the Mathematical Association in the United Kingdom.
This piece was pointed out to me many years ago by the late Professor George A. Barnard, University of Essex.
Yours sincerely,
Agnes M. Herzberg
Queen’s University
Kingston, Canada
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