Celebrating #OTD 🎂 of TWO former ASA Presidents: Wesley Mitchell & Rensis Likert 1. Wesley C Mitchell b 1874 (d 29 Oct 1948) ASA Fellow 1916, 13th ASA president 1918. Economist, pre-eminent researcher on business cycles; founding member & 1st Director National Bureau for Economic Research (NBER).

#OTD 1908 Mildred Barnard b (d 9 Mar 2000) 🎂 + One of the three “Founding Mothers” (with Betty Allan and Helen Newton Turner) of the Biostatistics division at the CSIRO, Australia + First woman to chair the Brisbane Branch of the International Biometrics Society.

Happy 🎂John Venn b #OTD 1834 (d 4 Apr 1923) A brilliant mathematician (Cambridge Wrangler 1857) he wrote an 1866 book on probability The Logic of Chance but he is better known for his diagram. He publishes his first diagram in 1880 but never says when or why he came to invent it.

In an unusual departure for an ASA presidential address, in Aug 1971, newly elected 66th ASA President Churchill Eisenhart (ASA Fellow 1943) discusses a central problem of statistical inference- the calculation of the "best" mean- with an overview from Pythagoras to the 19th century

Happy 🎂Mina Rees b #OTD 1902 (d 25 Oct 1997) IEEE Computer Pioneer awardee 1989 for contributions to the development of fast computer technology. Head of the ONR Mathematics Research Program that established math & computing infrastructure in support of scientific research

Paediatrician James M Tanner b #OTD 1920 (d 20 Aug 2010) developer of standard growth charts, should be better known for his 1949 warning about statistical artifact resulting from regressing variables ‘standardized’ with common terms e.g. Y/X versus X. This practice is still all too common 1/2

150 years before Ronald Fisher, Francois Cretté de Palluel (1741-1798) describes the first use of the Latin square as an experimental design #OTD 1788. He tested weight gains of 6 sheep in a 4 x 4 design: 4 diets with 4 breeds & 4 slaughter times 1/2

#OTD 1801 William Playfair introduces the pie chart in his book “The Statistical Breviary; Shewing, on a Principle Entirely New, the Resources of Every State and Kingdom in Europe; ....1/2

Ronald Aylmer Fisher d #OTD 1962 in Adelaide Australia. After he retired from Cambridge in 1957, he became senior research fellow at CSIRO. His ashes are interred at St Peter's Cathedral North Adelaide.

Happy Belated Birthday🎂to Povl Heiberg (27 Jul 1868-12 May 1963) A Danish physician he was among the first (1897) to describe the key role of statistical thinking in evidence-based medicine. His complaints of poor clinician understanding & misuse of statistical methods sound very modern. 1/2

#OTD 1801 Sir George B Airy b (d 02 Jan 1892) FRS Astronomer Royal. A brilliant mathematician, winner of the first Smith Prize 1823 (later won by Alan Turing), he developed basics of what are now linear mixed models & meta-analysis. His 1861 textbook influenced both Karl Pearson & Ronald Fisher.

Happy 🎂William Carter Jenkins b #OTD 1945 (d 17 Feb 2019) The Tuskegee whistle-blower epidemiologist, he was first to publicize the Tuskegee Syphilis Study (“the most unethical study in US history”) in the Drum (an anti-discrimination newsletter). 1/3 🧵

#OTD 1874 Robert H Coats b (d 7 Feb 1960) ASA Fellow 1922; ASA President 1938; 1st Dominion Statistician of Canada 1915, he established the Dominion Bureau of Statistics in 1918 (now Statistics Canada).

#OTD 1840 Carroll D Wright b (d 20 Feb 1909) 5th ASA President 1897-1909. In 1908 he has the first annual ASA meeting outside Washington or Boston (Atlantic City) & initiates the yearly ASA President address where he spells out why ASA changed its name from ‘Society’ to ‘Association’. Think about it

Happy🎂Paul Meier b #OTD 1924 (d 7 Aug 2011) ASA Fellow 1959; Wilks Award 2004; Hon IMS, RSS Fellow; President 1986 Society for Clinical Trials. Known for codeveloping with Ed Kaplan the 1958 Kaplan-Meier estimator (cringe-ingly headlined by WaPo as “co-inventor of a famous graph”) 1/4 🧵

Happy 🎂Ingram Olkin b# OTD 1924 (d 28 Apr 2016) ASA Fellow 1962; ASA Founders Award 1991. The first (and to date only) male recipient of the COPSS Elizabeth L. Scott Award for his advocacy for women in STEM. He also made major contributions to mathematical statistics, especially meta-analysis.

Update on yesterday's post on Frank Yates & the 3 tier star system: Source is David Finney's obit on Yates: Finney DJ 1995 Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 41: 554-573 1/4🧵

Happy 🎂Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel b #OTD 1784. An astronomer, known for Bessel's correction n – 1 for correcting bias in sample variance and Bessel's function. However, Bessel’s correction was probably developed by Gauss in 1823 & Bessel functions by Daniel Bernoulli (Stigler’s Law of Eponymy)

Few statisticians know that Frank Yates, pioneer of experimental design, is responsible for the annoying practice of indicating 3 tiers of statistical significance by stars (*p ≤ 0.05, **p ≤0.01, ***p ≤ 0.001). He soon regretted it and “vehemently opposed its unthinking use”. And here we are.

Happy 🎂to the Statistical Society of Canada, officially founded #OTD 1972. Letters Patent to the “Statistical Science Association of Canada/Association Canadienne de Science Statistique (SSAC/ACSS)” are granted by the Dept Consumer and Corporate Affairs. The Coat of Arms is conferred on 5 Jun 1990

The word ‘biometry’ is coined in 1831 by William Whewell (1794-1866) but he is referring to actuarial life expectancy calculations. Francis Galton co-opts it to describe "modern methods of statistics" applied to biology. In 1901, he, Karl Pearson & WFR Weldon found the journal Biometrika.

Happy 🎂Isobel Loutit b #OTD 1909 (d 19 Apr 2009). One of the first women professional statisticians in Canada, first F chair of the American Society for Quality Control (ASQC) Montreal section, Honorable Member of the Statistical Society of Canada for contributions to statistical quality control

#OTD 1837 Wilhelm Lexis b (d 24 Aug 1914) Pioneer of demographic time series analyses & developer of the Lexis diagram. Influenced by Quetelet, he trained in sciences but branched out to economics, demography, & mathematical statistics.

There Can Only Be One: Between 1836 & 1851, at least 5 statistical societies started up in the US. Only ASA survived. The others never got off the ground or changed focus. Thanks mostly to Edward Jarvis (ASA President for over 30 yrs), ASA somehow held together for the next 50 years

Three 🎂 of eminent statisticians to celebrate #OTD: Edgar Sydenstricker, William Cochran, David R Cox 🧵

#OTD 1940 James G Kalbfleish b (d 23 Apr 2017) ASA Fellow 1975; President Statistical Society of Canada 1984. An outstanding teacher & early advocate for computers in statistics education, his book on Probability and Statistical Inference is still widely used

#OTD 1920 Evelyn Mae (Rose) Kitagawa b (d 15 Sep 2007) ASA Fellow 1968. In 1955 she publishes the earliest decomposition method for detecting contributions of change of mean vs change of effect. It is generalised in 1973 by economists Ronald Oaxaca & Alan Blinder

Happy 🎂Douglas Altman b #OTD 1948 (d 3 June 2018) & your annual reminder that “We need less research, better research, and research done for the right reasons”. One of the most influential medical statisticians of the past 50 years he spearheaded reforms in research reliability & reporting. 1/2

Happy🎂Frances Elizabeth (Betty) Allan b #OTD 1905 (d 6 Aug 1952) First CSIRO statistician, effective founder CSIRO Division of Mathematics & Statistics. Her work as an applied statistician was the foundation for Australia's eventual emergence as a world leader in agricultural research

#OTD 1682 Roger Cotes b (d 5 June 1716) A close collaborator with Isaac Newton, he was an accomplished mathematician, anticipating the method of least squares & making important contributions to modern computational methods including interpolation