Francis John Anscombe (13 May 1918 – 17 October 2001) was an English

statistician A statistician is a person who works with theoretical or applied statistics. The profession exists in both the private and public sectors. It is common to combine statistical knowledge with expertise in other subjects, and statisticians may wor ...

. Born in

Hove Hove is a seaside resort and one of the two main parts of the city of Brighton and Hove, along with Brighton in East Sussex, England. Originally a "small but ancient fishing village" surrounded by open farmland, it grew rapidly in the 19th ce ...

in England, Anscombe was educated at Trinity College at

Cambridge University , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

. After serving in the Second World War, he joined

Rothamsted Experimental Station Rothamsted Research, previously known as the Rothamsted Experimental Station and then the Institute of Arable Crops Research, is one of the oldest agricultural research institutions in the world, having been founded in 1843. It is located at Harp ...

for two years before returning to Cambridge as a lecturer. In

experiment An experiment is a procedure carried out to support or refute a hypothesis, or determine the efficacy or likelihood of something previously untried. Experiments provide insight into cause-and-effect by demonstrating what outcome occurs wh ...

s, Anscombe emphasized

randomization Randomization is the process of making something random. Randomization is not haphazard; instead, a random process is a sequence of random variables describing a process whose outcomes do not follow a deterministic pattern, but follow an evolution ...

in both the design and analysis phases. In the

design A design is a plan or specification for the construction of an object or system or for the implementation of an activity or process or the result of that plan or specification in the form of a prototype, product, or process. The verb ''to design'' ...

phase, Anscombe argued that the experimenters should

randomize Randomization is the process of making something random. Randomization is not haphazard; instead, a random process is a sequence of random variables describing a process whose outcomes do not follow a deterministic pattern, but follow an evolution ...

the labels of blocks. In the

analysis Analysis ( : analyses) is the process of breaking a complex topic or substance into smaller parts in order to gain a better understanding of it. The technique has been applied in the study of mathematics and logic since before Aristotle (3 ...

phase, Anscombe argued that the randomization plan should guide the analysis of data; Anscombe's approach has influenced

John Nelder John Ashworth Nelder (8 October 1924 – 7 August 2010) was a British statistician known for his contributions to experimental design, analysis of variance, computational statistics, and statistical theory. Contributions Nelder's work was inf ...

and

R. A. Bailey Rosemary A. Bailey (born 1947) is a British statistician who works in the design of experiments and the analysis of variance and in related areas of combinatorial design, especially in association schemes. She has written books on the desi ...

in particular. He moved to

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the n ...

in 1956, and in the same year he was elected as a

Fellow of the American Statistical Association Like many other academic professional societies, the American Statistical Association (ASA) uses the title of Fellow of the American Statistical Association as its highest honorary grade of membership. The number of new fellows per year is limited ...

. He became the founding chairman of the statistics department at

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Sta ...

in 1963.

According to David Cox, his best-known work may be his 1961 account of formal properties of residuals in

linear regression In statistics, linear regression is a linear approach for modelling the relationship between a scalar response and one or more explanatory variables (also known as dependent and independent variables). The case of one explanatory variable is ...

. His earlier suggestion for a

variance-stabilizing transformation In applied statistics, a variance-stabilizing transformation is a data transformation that is specifically chosen either to simplify considerations in graphical exploratory data analysis or to allow the application of simple regression-based or an ...

for Poisson data is often known as the Anscombe transform. He later became interested in statistical computing, and stressed that "a computer should make both calculations ''and'' graphs", and illustrated the importance of graphing data with four data sets now known as

Anscombe's quartet Anscombe's quartet comprises four data sets that have nearly identical simple descriptive statistics, yet have very different distributions and appear very different when graphed. Each dataset consists of eleven (''x'',''y'') points. They were ...

. He later published a textbook on statistical computing in APL. In

economics Economics () is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics analy ...

and

decision theory Decision theory (or the theory of choice; not to be confused with choice theory) is a branch of applied probability theory concerned with the theory of making decisions based on assigning probabilities to various factors and assigning numerical ...

he is best known for a 1963 paper with

Robert Aumann Robert John Aumann (Hebrew name: , Yisrael Aumann; born June 8, 1930) is an Israeli-American mathematician, and a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences. He is a professor at the Center for the Study of Rationality in the Hebrew ...

which provides the standard basis for the theory of

subjective probability Bayesian probability is an interpretation of the concept of probability, in which, instead of frequency or propensity of some phenomenon, probability is interpreted as reasonable expectation representing a state of knowledge or as quantification o ...

. He was

brother-in-law A sibling-in-law is the spouse of one's sibling, or the sibling of one's spouse, or the person who is married to the sibling of one's spouse.Cambridge Dictionaries Online.Family: non-blood relations. More commonly, a sibling-in-law is referr ...

to another well-known statistician,

John Tukey John Wilder Tukey (; June 16, 1915 – July 26, 2000) was an American mathematician and statistician, best known for the development of the fast Fourier Transform (FFT) algorithm and box plot. The Tukey range test, the Tukey lambda distributi ...

; their wives were sisters.

References

External links

*
Francis John Anscombe Papers.
Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library. {{DEFAULTSORT:Anscombe, Francis J Rothamsted statisticians English statisticians American statisticians Yale University faculty Cambridge mathematicians Academics of the University of Cambridge Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge People from Hove 1918 births 2001 deaths Fellows of the American Statistical Association Burials at Princeton Cemetery English expatriates in the United States