Martin Wilk | |
|---|---|
| Chief Statistician of Canada | |
| In office 1980–1985 | |
| Preceded by | James L. Fry (interim) |
| Succeeded by | Ivan Fellegi |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 18 December 1922 Montreal, Quebec, Canada |
| Died | 19 February 2013 (aged 90) Yorba Linda, California |
| Alma mater | |
Martin Bradbury Wilk, OC (18 December 1922 – 19 February 2013)[1][2] was a Canadian statistician, academic, and the former Chief Statistician of Canada. In 1965, together with Samuel Shapiro, he developed the Shapiro–Wilk test, which can indicate whether a sample of numbers would be unusual if it came from a Gaussian distribution. With Ramanathan Gnanadesikan he developed a number of important graphical techniques for data analysis, including the Q–Q plot and P–P plot.
Education and career
Born in Montreal, Quebec, he received a bachelor of engineering degree in chemical engineering from McGill University in 1945. From 1945 to 1950, he was a Research Chemical Engineer on the Atomic Energy Project at the National Research Council of Canada. From 1951 to 1955, he was a Research Associate, Instructor, and Assistant Professor at Iowa State University, where he received a Master of Science in Statistics in 1953 and a Ph.D. in Statistics in 1955 under the supervision of Oscar Kempthorne. From 1955 to 1957, he was a Research Associate and Assistant Director of the Statistical Techniques Research Group at Princeton University. From 1959 to 1963, he was a Professor and Director of Research in Statistics at Rutgers University.[1]
In 1956, he joined Bell Telephone Laboratories and in 1970 joined American Telephone and Telegraph Company. From 1976 to 1980, he was the Assistant Vice President-Director of Corporate Planning. From 1980 to 1985, he was the Chief Statistician of Canada.[1]
In 1981, he was appointed an Adjunct Professor of Statistics at Carleton University.
In 1962 he was elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association.[3] In 1999, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada for his "insightful guidance on important matters related to our country's national statistical system".[1][4]
See also
- Wilk – people with the surname Wilk
References
- 1 2 3 4 "Martin B. Wilk". The Ottawa Citizen. Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. February 23, 2013. p. 59. Retrieved November 5, 2020 – via Newspapers.com.
- ↑ Lennick, Michael (10 April 2013). "Martin Wilk remembered as 'the best statistician in Canada's history'". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved 24 November 2013.
- ↑ View/Search Fellows of the ASA Archived 2016-06-16 at the Wayback Machine, accessed 2016-07-23.
- ↑ Order of Canada citation
- "Canadian Who's Who 1997 entry". Retrieved March 28, 2006.
- "Martin Bradbury Wilk". Statistical Society of Canada. Archived from the original on March 22, 2012. Retrieved July 20, 2012.
- A conversation with Martin Bradbury Wilk", C. Genest & G. Brackstone, Statistical Science, Vol. 25, No. 2. (May, 2010), pp. 258–272.