John Ashworth Nelder (8 October 1924 – 7 August 2010) was a British statistician known for his contributions to experimental design,

analysis of variance Analysis of variance (ANOVA) is a collection of statistical models and their associated estimation procedures (such as the "variation" among and between groups) used to analyze the differences among means. ANOVA was developed by the statistician ...

computational statistics Computational statistics, or statistical computing, is the bond between statistics and computer science. It means statistical methods that are enabled by using computational methods. It is the area of computational science (or scientific computin ...

, and

statistical theory The theory of statistics provides a basis for the whole range of techniques, in both study design and data analysis, that are used within applications of statistics. The theory covers approaches to statistical-decision problems and to statistica ...

Contributions

Nelder's work was influential in statistics. While leading research at Rothamsted Experimental Station, Nelder developed and supervised the updating of the statistical software packages GLIM and GenStat: Both packages are flexible

high-level programming language In computer science, a high-level programming language is a programming language with strong abstraction from the details of the computer. In contrast to low-level programming languages, it may use natural language ''elements'', be easier to us ...

s that allow statisticians to formulate linear models concisely. GLIM influenced later environments for statistical computing such as

S-PLUS S-PLUS is a commercial implementation of the S programming language sold by TIBCO Software Inc. It features object-oriented programming capabilities and advanced analytical algorithms. Due to the increasing popularity of the open source S succ ...

and R. Both GLIM and GenStat have powerful facilities for the

for

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experiments, an area where Nelder made many contributions. In

, Nelder and Wedderburn proposed the generalized linear model. Generalized linear models were formulated by John Nelder and Robert Wedderburn as a way of unifying various other statistical models, including linear regression, logistic regression and

Poisson regression In statistics, Poisson regression is a generalized linear model form of regression analysis used to model count data and contingency tables. Poisson regression assumes the response variable ''Y'' has a Poisson distribution, and assumes the logari ...

. They proposed an iteratively reweighted least squares

method Method ( grc, μέθοδος, methodos) literally means a pursuit of knowledge, investigation, mode of prosecuting such inquiry, or system. In recent centuries it more often means a prescribed process for completing a task. It may refer to: *Scien ...

for

maximum likelihood In statistics, maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) is a method of estimating the parameters of an assumed probability distribution, given some observed data. This is achieved by maximizing a likelihood function so that, under the assumed stat ...

estimation of the model parameters. In statistical inference, Nelder (along with George Barnard and

A. W. F. Edwards Anthony William Fairbank Edwards, FRS (born 1935) is a British statistician, geneticist and evolutionary biologist. He is the son of the surgeon Harold C. Edwards, and brother of medical geneticist John H. Edwards. He has sometimes been called ...

) emphasized the importance of the

likelihood The likelihood function (often simply called the likelihood) represents the probability of random variable realizations conditional on particular values of the statistical parameters. Thus, when evaluated on a given sample, the likelihood functi ...

in data analysis, promoting this "likelihood approach" as an alternative to

frequentist Frequentist inference is a type of statistical inference based in frequentist probability, which treats “probability” in equivalent terms to “frequency” and draws conclusions from sample-data by means of emphasizing the frequency or pro ...

and

Bayesian Thomas Bayes (/beɪz/; c. 1701 – 1761) was an English statistician, philosopher, and Presbyterian minister. Bayesian () refers either to a range of concepts and approaches that relate to statistical methods based on Bayes' theorem, or a followe ...

statistics. In response-surface

optimization Mathematical optimization (alternatively spelled ''optimisation'') or mathematical programming is the selection of a best element, with regard to some criterion, from some set of available alternatives. It is generally divided into two subfi ...

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Biography

Born in Brushford, Somerset">Brushford, near Dulverton, Somerset, Nelder was educated at Blundell's School and Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, where he read Mathematics. Nelder's appointments included Head of the Statistics Section at the Horticulture Research International, National Vegetable Research Station,

Wellesbourne Wellesbourne is a large village in the civil parish of Wellesbourne and Walton, in the county of Warwickshire, in the West Midlands region of the UK. In the 2021 census the parish, which also includes the hamlet of Walton, had a population o ...

, from 1951 to 1968 and head of the Statistics Department at Rothamsted Experimental Station from 1968 to 1984. During his time at Wellesbourne he spent a year (1965–1966) at the Waite Institute in Adelaide, South Australia, where he worked with Graham Wilkinson on Genstat. He held an appointment as Visiting Professor at

Imperial College London Imperial College London (legally Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom. Its history began with Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, who developed his vision for a cu ...

from 1972 onwards. He was responsible, with

Max Nicholson Edward Max Nicholson (12 July 1904 – 26 April 2003) was a pioneering environmentalist, ornithologist and internationalist, and a founder of the World Wildlife Fund. Early life Max Nicholson, as he was known to all, was born in Kilternan, Ir ...

and James Ferguson-Lees, for debunking the

Hastings Rarities The Hastings Rarities affair is a case of statistically demonstrated ornithological fraud that misled the bird world for decades in the 20th century. The discovery of the long-running hoax shocked ornithologists. The Hastings Rarities were a se ...

– sightings of a series of rare birds, preserved by a

taxidermist Taxidermy is the art of preserving an animal's body via mounting (over an armature) or stuffing, for the purpose of display or study. Animals are often, but not always, portrayed in a lifelike state. The word ''taxidermy'' describes the proc ...

and provided with bogus histories.Nelder, J.A. (1962). A statistical examination of the Hastings Rarities. '' British Birds'', August 1962. Nelder died on 7 August 2010 in Luton and Dunstable Hospital, taken there after a fall at home, which was incidental to the cause of death.

Awards and distinctions

Nelder was elected a

Fellow of the Royal Society Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the judges of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural knowledge, including mathemat ...

in 1976 and received the

Royal Statistical Society The Royal Statistical Society (RSS) is an established statistical society. It has three main roles: a British learned society for statistics, a professional body for statisticians and a charity which promotes statistics for the public good. ...

's Guy Medal in Gold in 2005. He was also the recipient of the inaugural Karl Pearson Prize of the International Statistical Institute, with Peter McCullagh, "for their monograph Generalized Linear Models (1983)". As tribute on his eightieth birthday, a festschrift ''Methods and Models in Statistics: In Honour of Professor John Nelder, FRS'' was edited by Niall Adams, Martin Crowder, David J Hand & Dave Stephens, Imperial College Press (2004). The first annual John Nelder memorial lecture was held at Imperial College London, on 8 March 2012, as part of the Mathematics department Colloquium series. The lecture was given by John's long term co-author, Prof Peter McCullagh. An interviewhttp://stats.ma.ic.ac.uk/~nadams/podcast/podcast6.mp3 with Peter McCullagh, about statistical modelling, includes some reminiscences about John.

Selected publications

* JN and R. W. M. Wedderburn, "Generalized Linear Models", ''J. R. Statist. Soc.'' A, 135 (1972) 370–384. * McCullagh, P. and J.A. Nelder. 1989. ''Generalized Linear Models''. 2nd ed. Chapman & Hall/CRC, Boca Raton, Florida. *Lee, Y., J.A. Nelder, and Y. Pawitan. 2006. ''Generalized Linear Models with Random Effects: Unified Analysis via H-likelihood''. Chapman & Hall/CRC, Boca Raton, Florida.

References

External links

A Conversation with John Nelder

{{DEFAULTSORT:Nelder, John Fellows of the Royal Society Presidents of the Royal Statistical Society Rothamsted statisticians English statisticians Academics of Imperial College London 20th-century British mathematicians 21st-century British mathematicians Alumni of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge People educated at Blundell's School People from Dulverton 1924 births 2010 deaths Rothamsted Experimental Station people