Helen Louise MacGillivray is an Australian statistician and statistics educator. She is the former president of the

International Statistical Institute The International Statistical Institute (ISI) is a professional association of statisticians. At a meeting of the Jubilee Meeting of the Royal Statistical Society, statisticians met and formed the agreed statues of the International Statistical ...

, the International Association for Statistical Education, and the Statistical Society of Australia, and chair of the

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is the Earth, global intergovernmental organization established by the signing of the Charter of the United Nations, UN Charter on 26 June 1945 with the stated purpose of maintaining international peace and internationa ...

Global Network of Institutions for Statistical Training.

Education and career

MacGillivray entered her studies at the

University of Queensland The University of Queensland is a Public university, public research university located primarily in Brisbane, the capital city of the Australian state of Queensland. Founded in 1909 by the Queensland parliament, UQ is one of the six sandstone ...

planning to work in physics, but ended up earning a bachelor's degree with honours in mathematics, in the course of which she discovered her love for statistics. She remained at the University of Queensland for graduate study, and completed a Ph.D. in statistics there. Her dissertation was ''Moment inequalities with applications to particle size distributions''. She was a professor of statistics and director of the Maths Access Centre at

Queensland University of Technology The Queensland University of Technology (QUT) is a public university, public research university located in the city of Brisbane in Queensland, Australia. It has two major campuses, a modern city campus in Gardens Point, Brisbane, Gardens Point ...

(QUT), until her retirement. She continues to hold an adjunct professorship at QUT.

Service

MacGillivray is the editor of the journal ''Teaching Statistics''. She was president of the International Statistical Institute for the 2017–2019 term. When she was elected president she became both the second woman and the second Australian to hold the position, after

Denise Lievesley Denise Anne Lievesley is a British social statistician. She has formerly been Chief Executive of the English Information Centre for Health and Social Care, Director of Statistics at UNESCO, in which capacity she founded the UNESCO Institute for ...

and Dennis Trewin. She was the first female president of the Statistical Society of Australia. She was president of the International Association for Statistical Education for 2009–2011, and is the founding chair of the Global Network of Institutions for Statistical Training of the

Books

With Peter Petocz, MacGillivray is the coauthor of the two-volume textbook ''Statistics and Probability in the Australian Curriculum'' (Years 7 and 8, and Years 9 and 10), and is the author of ''Utts & Heckard's Mind on Statistics'' (Nelson Australia, 2010, adapted from previous work by Jessica Utts and Robert Heckard).

Recognition

MacGillivray is a Fellow of 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. ...

, an Australian Learning and Teaching Fellow, an honorary life member of the Statistical Society of Australia, and a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. She was appointed a

Member of the Order of Australia The Order of Australia is an Australian honours and awards system, Australian honour that recognises Australian citizens and other persons for outstanding achievement and service. It was established on 14 February 1975 by Elizabeth II, Monarch ...

in the

2024 Australia Day Honours The 2024 Australia Day Honours are appointments to various orders and honours to recognise and reward good works by Australian citizens. The list was announced on 26 January 2024 by the Governor General of Australia, David Hurley. The Australi ...

for her "significant service to mathematics and statistics education".

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:MacGillivray, Helen Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Australian statisticians Australian women statisticians Statistics educators University of Queensland alumni Academic staff of Queensland University of Technology Presidents of the International Statistical Institute Members of the Order of Australia Fellows of the Royal Statistical Society Mathematical statisticians