The Practice of Data Analysis: Essays in Honor of John W. Tukey

by David R. Brillinger (Editor), Luisa T. Fernholz (Editor), Stephan Morgenthaler (Editor)

Overview

This collection of essays brings together many of the world's most distinguished statisticians to discuss a wide array of the most important recent developments in data analysis. The book honors John W. Tukey, one of the most influential statisticians of the twentieth century, on the occasion of his eightieth birthday. Contributors, some of them Tukey's former students, use his general theoretical work and his specific contributions to Exploratory Data Analysis as the point of departure for their papers. They cover topics from "pure" data analysis, such as gaussianizing transformations and regression estimates, and from "applied" subjects, such as the best way to rank the abilities of chess players or to estimate the abundance of birds in a particular area.

Tukey may be best known for coining the common computer term "bit," for binary digit, but his broader work has revolutionized the way statisticians think about and analyze sets of data. In a personal interview that opens the book, he reviews these extraordinary contributions and his life with characteristic modesty, humor, and intelligence. The book will be valuable both to researchers and students interested in current theoretical and practical data analysis and as a testament to Tukey's lasting influence.

The essays are by Dhammika Amaratunga, David Andrews, David Brillinger, Christopher Field, Leo Goodman, Frank Hampel, John Hartigan, Peter Huber, Mia Hubert, Clifford Hurvich, Karen Kafadar, Colin Mallows, Stephan Morgenthaler, Frederick Mosteller, Ha Nguyen, Elvezio Ronchetti, Peter Rousseeuw, Allan Seheult, Paul Velleman, Maria-Pia Victoria-Feser, and Alessandro Villa.

Originally published in 1998.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691601595
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	07/14/2014
Series:	Princeton Legacy Library , #401
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

David R. Brillinger is Professor of Statistics at the University of California at Berkeley. He is the author of "Time Series: Data Analysis and Theory". Luisa T. Fernholz is Associate Professor of Statistics at Temple University and Director of the Minerva Research Foundation. She is the author of" von Mises Calculus for Statistical Functionals". Stephan Morgenthaler is Professor of Mathematics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. He is the coeditor of "Configural Polysampling".

Read an Excerpt

THE PRACTICE OF DATA ANALYSIS

ESSAYS IN HONOR OF JOHN W. TUKEY

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By D. R. BRILLINGER, L. T. FERNHOLZ, S. MORGENTHALER

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 1997 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-05782-8

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PREFACE

John W. Tukey celebrated his 80th birthday on June 16, 1995. Such an occasion should, of course, not go unnoticed, and in order to allow as many people as possible to join in the celebration, it was natural to organize a symposium in his honor at Princeton University. At Luisa Fernholz's initiative we contacted people by mail, email, and phone. The response to our invitation was overwhelming. Over a hundred of his friends, students and co-workers from all over the world wanted to be part of the festivities and come to Princeton on June 19th and 20th, 1995.

Thirteen speakers gave talks covering a wide range of topics befitting an event in honor of John Tukey. Throughout the two-day symposium a cordial and warm atmosphere was felt in which the participants expressed their gratitude and best wishes to John. The dinner in his honor on June 19th turned into a memorable celebration; we thank all the participants for their enthusiastic support of this festive event.

The present festschrift is an outgrowth of this two-day symposium. The first part includes the speech that Elizabeth Tukey prepared for the dinner on June 19th, and a transcript of the conversation with John Tukey on the afternoon of June 20th, which we hope conveys the spirit of the conference. We are also including a short biography and a curriculum vitae. John Tukey has published more than five hundred papers and we do not reprint a bibliography since a detailed version appears in his collected works (Vol. I through VII, Wadsworth & Brooks/Cole, Pacific Grove, California, Vol. VIII, Chapman & Hall, London, UK).

An aspect of John Tukey's personality that is less widely known is his great generosity with his ideas. He guided many graduate students to successful Ph.D.s and inspired their careers. A list of his students and a partial list of his grand-students is also included.

The second part of the festschrift contains the contributed papers that some speakers, participants, and other researchers have prepared to honor John. We thank them for their contributions. We would also like to thank all the referees involved in this enterprise. They put in a considerable amount of work and were instrumental in ensuring a high quality.

We would like to express our gratitude to Elizabeth Tukey for helping us capture the right spirit throughout the preparation of the symposium and for providing us with some essential background information towards the preparation of questions for the conversation with John. Elizabeth also provided us with the speech that she prepared for the dinner on June 19th, and some valuable photographs that we reproduce here.

The organization of the symposium would not have been possible without the financial support from the Minerva Research Foundation. We thank Prof. Joseph J. Kohn, chairman of the Mathematics Department of Princeton University, for sponsoring the symposium. We also thank the staff of the Mathematics Department and especially Eileen Olszewski for her dedicated effort in handling much of the organizational work. Anne-Lise Choulat, staff member of the Mathematics Department of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, did much of the work involved in the typesetting of the papers. We thank her for a job well-done.

Princeton, April 15, 1996

David R. Brillinger, Luisa T. Fernholz, and Stephan Morgenthaler

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from THE PRACTICE OF DATA ANALYSIS by D. R. BRILLINGER, L. T. FERNHOLZ, S. MORGENTHALER. Copyright © 1997 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Preface

Introductory Remarks 3

Biographical Information 5

Curriculum Vitae of John Wilder Tukey 9

Ph.D. Theses Directed by John W. Tukey: Princeton University, 1940-1990 16

Partial List of John W. Tukey's Grandstudents 19

A Conversation with John W. Tukey 26

Elizabeth Tukey's Speech 46

Program of the Conference in Honor of John W. Tukey on His 80th Birthday 48

List of Participants 49

Errors-in-Variables Regression Estimators That Have High Breakdown and High Gaussian Efficiency 57

The Analytic Jackknife 67

Assessing Connections in Networks of Biological Neurons 77

Estimating Abundances for a Breeding Bird Atlas 93

Statistical Methods, Graphical Displays, and Tukey's Ladder of Re-Expression in the Analysis of Nonindependence in Contingency Tables: Correspondence Analysis, Association Analysis, and the Midway View of Nonindependence 101

Some Additional Notes on the "Princeton Robustness Year" 133

Tracking Chees Players' Abilities 155

Speculations on the Path of Statistics 175

A Regression Analysis with Categorical Covariables, Two-way Heteroscedasticity, and Hidden Outliers 193

Mean Square over Degrees of Freedom: New Perspectives on a Model Selection Treasure 203

Geographical Trends in Cancer Mortality: Spatial Smoothers and Adjustment 217

Covering Designs in Random Environments 235

Gaussianizing Transformations and Estimation 247

The Tennessee Study of Class Size in the Early School Grades 261

On the Distribution of Order Statistics from a p-wild Distribution 279

Resistant Modelling of Income Distributions and Inequality Measures 287

Bonus Decompositions for Robust Analysis of 2[superscript n] Factorial Experiments 299

The Philosophical Past and the Digital Future of Data Analysis: 375 Years of Philosophical Guidance for Software Design on the Occasion of John W. Tukey's 80th Birthday 317

Editorial Reviews

"An eclectic but consistently stimulating collection of essays. . . . Students of statistics will find fresh ideas (and a few potential research topics). Those interested in data analysis will find provocative articles. All will find a remarkably diverse and readable book in which the wisdom/theorem ratio is unusually high."

Journal of the American Statistical Association

"An eclectic but consistently stimulating collection of essays. . . . Students of statistics will find fresh ideas (and a few potential research topics). Those interested in data analysis will find provocative articles. All will find a remarkably diverse and readable book in which the wisdom/theorem ratio is unusually high."—Journal of the American Statistical Association

From the Publisher