James Orvis Berger (born April 6, 1950 in Minneapolis, Minnesota) is an American

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 ...

best known for his work on

Bayesian statistics Bayesian statistics is a theory in the field of statistics based on the Bayesian interpretation of probability where probability expresses a ''degree of belief'' in an event. The degree of belief may be based on prior knowledge about the event, ...

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 won the

COPSS Presidents' Award The COPSS Presidents' Award is given annually by the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies to a young statistician in recognition of outstanding contributions to the profession of statistics. The COPSS Presidents' Award is generall ...

, one of the two highest awards in statistics, in 1985 at the age of 35. He received a Ph.D. in mathematics from

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to ...

in 1974. He was a faculty member in the Department of Statistics at

Purdue University Purdue University is a public land-grant research university in West Lafayette, Indiana, and the flagship campus of the Purdue University system. The university was founded in 1869 after Lafayette businessman John Purdue donated land and ...

until 1997, at which time he moved to the Institute of Statistics and Decision Sciences (now the Department of Statistical Science) at Duke University, where he is currently the Arts and Sciences Professor of Statistics. He was also Director of the

Statistical and Applied Mathematical Sciences Institute Statistical and Applied Mathematical Sciences Institute (SAMSI) is an applied mathematics and statistics research organization based in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. It is funded by the National Science Foundation, and is partnered with ...

from 2002-2010, and has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago since 2011.

Contributions to science

Berger has worked on the decision theoretic bases of Bayesian inference, including advances on the

Stein Stein is a German, Yiddish and Norwegian word meaning "stone" and "pip" or "kernel". It stems from the same Germanic root as the English word stone. It may refer to: Places In Austria * Stein, a neighbourhood of Krems an der Donau, Lower Au ...

phenomenon during and after his thesis. He has also greatly contributed to advances in the so-called objective Bayes approach where prior distributions are constructed from the structure of the sampling distributions and/or of frequentist properties. He is also recognized for his analysis of the opposition between Bayesian and frequentist visions on testing statistical hypotheses, with criticisms of the use of p-values and critical levels.

Awards and honors

Berger has received numerous awards for his work:

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

, the

and the R. A. Fisher Lectureship. He was elected as a Fellow of the

American Statistical Association The American Statistical Association (ASA) is the main professional organization for statisticians and related professionals in the United States. It was founded in Boston, Massachusetts on November 27, 1839, and is the second oldest continuous ...

and to the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nat ...

in 2003. In 2004, he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science degree by

Bibliography

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References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Berger, Jim Duke University faculty American statisticians Fellows of the American Statistical Association Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Presidents of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics Cornell University alumni Living people 1950 births Scientists from Minneapolis Annals of Statistics editors