George Box
George Edward Pelham Box (born October 18, 1919 in Gravesend , England , † March 28, 2013 in Madison (Wisconsin) , USA ) was a British statistician and professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison , where he founded the Department of Statistics . He became particularly well known for his work on quality assurance , time series analysis , statistical test planning and Bayesian statistics . He wrote the quote “Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful”, in German, for example, “All models are essentially wrong, but some are useful”.
Career
During World War II , Box was working on a poison gas biochemical experiment for the British military. Since he needed statistical methods to analyze the experiment, but could not find suitable statisticians, he worked himself into the matter. After the war, he earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics and statistics from University College London . In 1953 he got the Ph. D.
After holding positions at the universities in Princeton and North Carolina , he came to the University of Wisconsin in 1960. There he became a professor. In 1992 he retired.
In the 1950s he developed the EVOP (Evolutionary Operation) process for planning experiments and optimizing while the industrial process was running.
Honors
The Box-Muller method for generating normally distributed random numbers from 1958 was named after Box and his colleague Mervin Edgar Muller .
- 1968: Shewhart Medal
- 1972: Wilks Memorial Award
- 1974: Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
- 1974: RA Fisher Lectureship
- 1978: President of the American Statistical Association
- 1993: Golden Guy Medal from the Royal Statistical Society
Publications
- Contribution to Owen L. Davies (Ed.): The design and analysis of industrial experiments , Oliver and Boyd 1954
- Contribution to Owen L. Davies (Ed.): Statistical methods in research and production with special reference to the chemical industry , Oliver and Boyd 1958
- with William G. Hunter and J. Stuart Hunter: Statistics for Experimenters: an Introduction to Design, Innovation, and Discovery , Wiley 1978, 2005.
- Box on Quality and Discovery: With Design, Control and Robustness (editors George C. Tiao, Søren Bisgaard), Wiley 2000.
- with Norman R. Draper : Evolutionary Operation: A Statistical Method for Process Improvement , Wiley 1969, Reprint Wiley Classics Library 1998.
- German translation: The EVOP process: the industrial process, its control and concurrent optimization , Oldenbourg 1975
- with Gregory C. Reinsel, Gwllyn Jenkins, Greta M. Ljung: Time Series Analysis Forecasting and Control , Holden-Day 1970 (with Jenkins), Wiley 1994, 5th edition 2016.
- Bayesian Inference in Statistical Analysis , Addison-Wesley 1973.
- with Alberto Luceño, María del Carmen Paniagua-Quiñones: Statistical Control: by Monitoring and Feedback Adjustment , Wiley 1997, 2nd edition 2009.
- with George C. Tiao: Bayesian Inference in Statistical Analysis , Addison-Wesley 1973, Reprint Wiley Classics Library 1992.
- with Norman R. Draper: Response Surfaces, Mixtures, and Ridge Analyzes , Wiley 1998, 2007 (2nd edition of Empirical Model-Building and Response Surfaces from 1987)
- An accidental statistician: the life and memories of George EP Box , 2013
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Box, George |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Box, George Edward Pelham (full name); Pelham box, George E. |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British statistician |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 18, 1919 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Gravesend , England |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 28, 2013 |
| Place of death | Madison, Wisconsin , USA |