George Alfred Barnard
This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations. (October 2013) |
George A. Barnard | |
---|---|
Born | Walthamstow, London, England | 23 September 1915
Died | 30 July 2002 Brightlingsea, Essex, England | (aged 86)
Citizenship | United Kingdom |
Education | University of Cambridge Princeton University |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Statistics |
Institutions | Imperial College London University of Essex University of Waterloo |
Doctoral advisor | Alonzo Church |
Doctoral students | Dennis Lindley K. D. Tocher Vidyadhar P. Godambe |
George Alfred Barnard (23 September 1915 – 30 July 2002) was a British statistician known particularly for his work on the foundations of statistics and on quality control.[1]
Early life and education
George Barnard was born in
Career
Barnard was on holiday in Britain when the
At the end of the war, Barnard went to
Barnard's best known contribution is probably his 1962 paper on likelihood inference but the paper he thought his best was the 1949 paper in which he first espoused the likelihood principle. He had originally described the principle in the context of optional stopping. A statement by Leonard Savage brings out how surprising the principle first seemed:
I learned the
stopping rule principle from Professor Barnard in ... 1952. Frankly, I then thought it a scandal that anyone in the profession could advance an idea so patently wrong, even as today I can scarcely believe that some people resist an idea so patently right.[3]
Political activism
In an interview Barnard recalled, "my main interest above everything was politics from about 1933 until 1956. Well, that’s not true – until the end of the war it would be fair to say." At school he proposed the motion to the school debating society that "Socialism is preferable to Capitalism." He joined the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1933 and took part in anti-fascist marches in the east end of London. The historian Eric Hobsbawm, a fellow communist at Cambridge, recalled him as a "lean-and-hungry-looking mathematician from a working class family" who served as the "student Party's chief local commissar."[4] At Plessey he was chairman of the shop stewards.
Awards
Barnard served terms as president of three societies: Operational Research Society in 1962–1964, the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications in 1970–1971, and the Royal Statistical Society in 1971–1972. He was awarded the Guy Medal in Gold by the Royal Statistical Society in 1975.
In May 1986, Barnard was awarded an honorary degree by the Open University as Doctor of the university, and in 1994 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Essex.
Personal life
He married first, Helen J.B. Davis in 1942 and they had three sons. He married second, Mary M.L. Jones in 1949 and they had one son.
Barnard died at his home in Essex in August 2002. Dennis Lindley, writing in
Publications
- Barnard, G.A. (1945). "A new test for 2×2 tables". Nature. 156 (3954): 177 & 783. S2CID 186244479.
- Barnard, G.A. (1946). "Sequential tests in industrial statistics". Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Supplement. 8: 1–26.
- Barnard, G.A. (1949). "Statistical Inference". Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. B. 11 (2): 115–149. JSTOR 2984075.
- Barnard, G.A. (195). "Control charts and stochastic processes". Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. B. B (21): 239–271.
- Barnard, G.A.; JSTOR 2982406.
- Geisser, Seymour; et al., eds. (1990). Bayesian and Likelihood Methods in Statistics and Econometrics: Essays in honor of George A. Barnard. North-Holland. – This contains a review of Barnard's work by Lindley. The volume was one of a series honouring Bayesian heroes. There is a bibliography (citing 109 articles) up to 1989.
In 1990 he made a book out of manuscripts left by his friend Egon Pearson:
- Pearson, E. S.(1990). Plackett, R.L.; Barnard, G.A. (eds.). 'Student', a statistical biography of William Sealy Gosset. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
After 1990 Barnard published little, although he kept up his letter writing. In 1996 however he produced a review of Barndorff-Nielsen and Cox after observing that, "A great virtue of the book is that it raises perhaps as many questions as it answers," Barnard went on to give his answer to one of those questions:
- Cox, D.R. (1996). "Review of Inference and Asymptotics by O.E. Barndorff-Nielsen". Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. A. 159: 178–179.
See also
References
- ^ Dennis Lindley (9 August 2002). "George Barnard". The Guardian. Retrieved 12 November 2023.
- ^ "Fellows of the ASA". American Statistical Association. Retrieved 23 July 2016.
- ^ Savage, Leonard Jimmie (1961). Foundations of Statistical Inference. p. 75.
- ^ Hobsbawm, Eric (2002). Interesting Times: a Twentieth-Century Life. p. 116.
- ^ "Barnard, Prof. George Alfred". Who Was Who (online ed.). A & C Black, 1920–2008; Oxford University Press. December 2007. Retrieved 11 November 2012.
External links
- Lindley, D.V. (2003). "Professor George A. Barnard (1915–2002)". The Statistician. 52 (2): 231–234. .
- de Groot, M.H. (1988). "A Conversation with George A. Barnard". JSTOR 2245568.
- Lindley. "Obituary" (PDF). Obituary. IMS Bulletin: 8. Archived from the original (PDF) on 11 December 2005. – Briefer obituary
- "portrait of George Alfred Barnard". on the page "Portraits of Statisticians". Mathematics. York U.
- Bennett, J.H. (ed.). "Statistical Inference and Analysis, selected correspondence of R.A. Fisher". Archived from the original on 20 November 2005. – Barnard's correspondence with Fisher
- "School Debate". 1932. Archived from the original on 24 October 2005. – Barnard the school debater
- "A Conversation with V.P. Godambe". – Barnard the PhD supervisor
- "London Review of Books". 29 July 1999. – Barnard the letter writer