Nancy Reid

The Florida State University Department of Statistics announces Nancy Reid, university professor and Canada Research Chair in Statistical Methodology at the University of Toronto, as the inaugural speaker for its newly endowed Myles Hollander Distinguished Lecture.

Reid will present “Three Rs—Reliability, Replicability, Reproducibility: The Interplay Between Statistical Science and Data Science,” October 30.

The Myles Hollander Distinguished Lectureship was established by Hollander, a Robert O. Lawton distinguished professor and statistics professor emeritus at Florida State University, in appreciation of the university, its statistics department, and the statistics profession. The annual lectureship will recognize an internationally renowned leader and pioneering researcher in statistics who has made a sustained impact on the field, and the lectures will feature topics spanning the breadth of statistics.

Reid earned her PhD from Stanford in 1979 and taught at the University of British Columbia from 1980 to 1985, before moving to the University of Toronto. Among her many professional honors are the President’s Award of the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies in 1992. She is also a fellow of the Royal Society of London, foreign associate of the US National Academy of Sciences, and fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. In 2014, she was appointed to the Order of Canada for her extraordinary contributions to the Canadian nation.

Reid’s research has had broad influence, including in statistical theory, likelihood inference, design of studies, and statistical science in public policy. Her main research contributions have been to the field of theoretical statistics. The goal is to use information from noisy data as efficiently as possible, and to elucidate general principles for doing so, to provide structures for developing new statistical methods in new areas of application.

Hollander joined the FSU Department of Statistics in 1965 upon completion of his MS and PhD in statistics at Stanford University and his BS in mathematics from Carnegie Institute of Technology. He made substantial and enduring research contributions to nonparametric statistics, reliability theory, survival analysis, biostatistics, and probability theory. Hollander co-authored textbooks on nonparametric statistics, biostatistics, and introductory statistics. He is a fellow of the American Statistical Association, fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, and an elected member of the International Statistical Institute. Hollander served as editor of the Journal of the American Statistical Association, Theory and Methods (1994–1996). In 2003, the ASA recognized him with the Gottfried E. Noether Senior Scholar Award for his excellence in theory, methodology, and applications in nonparametric statistics.

At FSU, Hollander served as chair of statistics for nine years (1978–1981, 1999–2005). He received the Professorial Excellence Award in 1977, was named distinguished research professor in 1996, and named Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor—the highest honor Florida State faculty bestow upon one of their own—in 1998. He retired in 2007 after 42 years of service.

Brandon Carter

ASA member Brandon Carter joined the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) as a summer associate in the Strategy, Forces, and Resources Division of IDA’s Systems and Analyses Center.

Carter is working toward his doctorate in statistics at The University of Texas at Austin. He earned his master’s degree in statistics from Brigham Young University in 2019.

IDA is a nonprofit corporation that operates three federally funded research and development centers in the public interest. IDA answers the most challenging US security and science policy questions with objective analysis leveraging extraordinary scientific, technical, and analytic expertise.

Howard Wainer

Submitted by Jun Yan, ASA Joint Section on Statistical Computing and Statistical Graphics Awards Chair

The Joint Statistical Computing and Statistical Graphics Section have awarded the 2021 ASA Statistical Computing and Graphics Award to Howard Wainer. His citation reads as follows:

Wainer was a distinguished research scientist for the National Board of Medical Examiners and an adjunct professor of statistics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania prior to his retirement in 2016. He earned his PhD in psychometrics from Princeton University in 1968. After being on the faculty of psychology at Temple University and The University of Chicago and a period at the Bureau of Social Science Research, he was senior and principal research scientist at the Educational Testing Service Division of Statistical and Psychological Research Services for 21 years.

He has a long-standing interest in the use and practice of statistical graphics in scientific inquiries and has published nearly two dozen books on graphics and statistical thinking and contributed to the development of graphical methods and software. He has written a column on data visualization for CHANCE magazine since 1990. Wainer is a fellow of the American Statistical Association and American Educational Research Association.

The ASA Statistical Computing and Graphics Award recognizes an individual or team for innovation in computing, software, or graphics that has had a significant impact on statistical practice or research. Past awardees include Luke Tierney (2019), Bill Cleveland (2016), and Robert Gentleman and Ross Ihaka (2010).

The award will be presented at the sections’ mixer during the 2021 Joint Statistical Meetings. Additionally, an invited session honoring Howard Wainer and organized by David Hoaglin is reserved for JSM 2021.