It is with much sadness that I heard from Oxford yesterday night that David Cox had passed away. Hither goes a giant of the field, whose contributions to theoretical and methodological statistics are enormous and whose impact on society is truly exceptional. He was the first recipient of the International Prize in Statistics in 2016 (aka the “Nobel of Statistics”) among many awards and a Fellow of the Royal Society among many other recognitions. He was also the editor of Biometrika for 25 years (!) and was still submitting papers to the journal a few month ago. Statistical Science published a conversation between Nancy Reid and him that tells a lot about the man and his amazing modesty. While I had met him in 1989, when he was visiting Cornell University as a distinguished visitor (and when I drove him to the house of Anne and George Casella for dinner once), then again in the 1990s when he came on a two-day visit to CREST, we only really had a significant conversation in 2011 (!), when David and I attended the colloquium in honour of Mike Titterington in Glasgow and he proved to be most interested in the ABC algorithm. He published a connected paper in Biometrika the year after, with Christiana Katsonaki. We met a few more times later, always in Oxford, to again discuss ABC. In each occasion, he was incredibly kind and considerate.
Archive for International Prize in Statistics
David Cox (1924-2022)
Posted in Books, Statistics, University life with tags ABC, Applied probabillity, Applied stochastic processes, Biometrika, Birmingham, Copley Medal, Cornell University, Cox process, CREST, David Cox, England, experimental design, FRS, Glasgow, Guy Medal in Gold, International Prize in Statistics, Ithaca, Kettering Prize for Cancer Research, mathematical statistics, Mike Titterington, New York, obituary, Royal Society, statistical methodology, University of Oxford on January 20, 2022 by xi'anEM gets the Nobel (of statistics)
Posted in Statistics with tags EM algorithm, Harvard University, International Prize in Statistics, longitudinal studies, Nan Laird, random effects on March 23, 2021 by xi'an
bootstrap in Nature
Posted in Statistics with tags ASA, bootstrap, Brad Efron, empirical Bayes methods, IMS, International Prize in Statistics, ISI, Nature, Nobel Prize, RSS, Stanford on December 29, 2018 by xi'an
A news item in the latest issue of Nature I received about Brad Efron winning the “Nobel Prize of Statistics” this year. The bootstrap is certainly an invention worth the recognition, not to mention Efron’s contribution to empirical Bayes analysis,, even though I remain overall reserved about the very notion of a Nobel prize in any field… With an appropriate XXL quote, who called the bootstrap method the ‘best statistical pain reliever ever produced’!
statistics snapshots from Nature
Posted in Books, Kids, pictures, Statistics, University life with tags @ScientistTrump, American elections 2016, David Cox, Donald Trump, International Prize in Statistics, Nature on November 6, 2016 by xi'an
Two snapshots from the October 27 issue of Nature, one reporting on David Cox receiving the first “Nobel in Statistics” Prize and one about the @ScientistTrump parody site, where being Bayesian sounds like a slur..!
David Cox gets the first International Prize in Statistics
Posted in pictures, Statistics, University life with tags Cox Model, David Cox, IMS, International Prize in Statistics, Nobel Prize, Nuffield College, proportional hazards model, survival analysis, University of Oxford on October 20, 2016 by xi'an
Just received an email from the IMS that Sir David Cox (Nuffield College, Oxford) has been awarded the International Prize in Statistics. As discussed earlier on the ‘Og, this prize is intended to act as the equivalent of a Nobel prize for statistics. While I still have reservations about the concept. I have none whatsoever about the nomination as David would have been my suggestion from the start. Congratulations to him for the Prize and more significantly for his massive contributions to statistics, with foundational, methodological and societal impacts! [As Peter Diggle, President of the Royal Statistical Society just pointed out, it is quite fitting that it happens on European Statistics day!]
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