Geoffrey Stuart Watson (3 December 1921 – 3 January 1998) was an Australian

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 ...

. Watson was born in

Bendigo, Victoria Bendigo ( ) is a city in Victoria, Australia, located in the Bendigo Valley near the geographical centre of the state and approximately north-west of Melbourne, the state capital. As of 2019, Bendigo had an urban population of 100,991, mak ...

in 1921. He studied at the

University of Melbourne The University of Melbourne is a public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in Victoria. Its main campus is located in Parkville, an inner suburb n ...

, and received his PhD at the

North Carolina State University North Carolina State University (NC State) is a public land-grant research university in Raleigh, North Carolina. Founded in 1887 and part of the University of North Carolina system, it is the largest university in the Carolinas. The universi ...

in 1951. After taking positions at the

, the

Australian National University The Australian National University (ANU) is a public research university located in Canberra, the capital of Australia. Its main campus in Acton encompasses seven teaching and research colleges, in addition to several national academies and ...

, the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institu ...

and

Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hemisphere. It consiste ...

, he became chair of the Department of Statistics of

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 1970. He remained there until his death. Watson developed the

Durbin–Watson statistic In statistics, the Durbin–Watson statistic is a test statistic used to detect the presence of autocorrelation at lag 1 in the residuals (prediction errors) from a regression analysis. It is named after James Durbin and Geoffrey Watson. The ...

for detecting

autocorrelation Autocorrelation, sometimes known as serial correlation in the discrete time case, is the correlation of a signal with a delayed copy of itself as a function of delay. Informally, it is the similarity between observations of a random variable ...

with

James Durbin __NOTOC__ James Durbin FBA (30 June 1923 – 23 June 2012) was a British statistician and econometrician, known particularly for his work on time series analysis and serial correlation. Education The son of a greengrocer, Durbin was born in W ...

of the

London School of Economics , mottoeng = To understand the causes of things , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £240.8 million (2021) , budget = £391.1 mill ...

in 1950. Watson was especially interested in applications of statistics. He used statistical methods to support the theory of

continental drift Continental drift is the hypothesis that the Earth's continents have moved over geologic time relative to each other, thus appearing to have "drifted" across the ocean bed. The idea of continental drift has been subsumed into the science of pla ...

. He estimated the size of the

penguin Penguins ( order Sphenisciformes , family Spheniscidae ) are a group of aquatic flightless birds. They live almost exclusively in the Southern Hemisphere: only one species, the Galápagos penguin, is found north of the Equator. Highly adapt ...

population in

Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean, it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest co ...

, and the effect of repealing the

motorcycle helmet A motorcycle helmet is a type of helmet used by motorcycle riders. Motorcycle helmets contribute to motorcycle safety by protecting the rider's head in the event of an impact. They reduce the risk of head injury by 69% and the risk of death by 42% ...

law in the United States. In 1966 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 ...

.View/Search Fellows of the ASA
, accessed 2016-08-20. He is sometimes confused with the mathematician G. L. Watson, who worked on quadratic forms, and

G. N. Watson George Neville Watson (31 January 1886 – 2 February 1965) was an English mathematician, who applied complex analysis to the theory of special functions. His collaboration on the 1915 second edition of E. T. Whittaker's ''A Course of Modern ...

, a mathematical analyst.

References

* * New York Times
''Geoffrey S. Watson, 76; Wrote Statistics Formula''
', ''18 January 1998.

Interview

* R. J. Beran and N. I. Fisher (1998) A conversation with Geoff Watson, Statistical Science, 75–9
Project Euclid

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Watson, Geoffrey Stuart 1921 births 1998 deaths North Carolina State University alumni Australian statisticians People from Bendigo Johns Hopkins University faculty Princeton University faculty 20th-century American mathematicians Fellows of the American Statistical Association Academic staff of the University of Toronto