Kirstine Smith (April 12, 1878 – November 11, 1939) was a Danish

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

. She is credited with the creation of the field of optimal design of experiments.

Background

Smith grew up in the town of Nykøbing Mors,

Denmark Denmark is a Nordic countries, Nordic country in Northern Europe. It is the metropole and most populous constituent of the Kingdom of Denmark,, . also known as the Danish Realm, a constitutionally unitary state that includes the Autonomous a ...

. In 1903, she graduated from the

University of Copenhagen The University of Copenhagen (, KU) is a public university, public research university in Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark. Founded in 1479, the University of Copenhagen is the second-oldest university in Scandinavia, after Uppsala University. ...

with a degree in mathematics and physics. After, she worked as secretary to astronomer and statistician Thorvald Thiele Gumpertz, M.L. Thumbnail biography of Kirstine Smith (Accessed 23 August 2013).
/ref> and later with the

International Council for the Exploration of the Sea The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES; , ''CIEM'') is a regional fishery advisory body and the world's oldest intergovernmental science organization. ICES is headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark, where its multinational s ...

for which she authored several volumes on fish populations.Crary Group (Accessed 23 August 2013 via Google archive).
In 1916, Smith was admitted for doctoral training at the

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a collegiate university, federal Public university, public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The ...

where

Karl Pearson Karl Pearson (; born Carl Pearson; 27 March 1857 – 27 April 1936) was an English biostatistician and mathematician. He has been credited with establishing the discipline of mathematical statistics. He founded the world's first university ...

had founded the first university statistics department. She was a student of Pearson who described her as “brilliant” in a letter to

Ronald Fisher Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher (17 February 1890 – 29 July 1962) was a British polymath who was active as a mathematician, statistician, biologist, geneticist, and academic. For his work in statistics, he has been described as "a genius who a ...

. At London, she produced an influential paper in the journal

Biometrika ''Biometrika'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal published by Oxford University Press for the Biometrika Trust. The editor-in-chief is Paul Fearnhead (Lancaster University). The principal focus of this journal is theoretical statistics. It was ...

on minimum chi-squared estimation of the correlation coefficient. Disagreements about aspects of her work led to increased friction between Pearson and Fisher. In her dissertation, which was published in 1918 (see below), she invented

optimal design In the design of experiments, optimal experimental designs (or optimum designs) are a class of experimental designs that are optimal with respect to some statistical criterion. The creation of this field of statistics has been credited to D ...

where she computed G-optimal designs for

polynomial regression In statistics, polynomial regression is a form of regression analysis in which the relationship between the independent variable ''x'' and the dependent variable ''y'' is modeled as a polynomial in ''x''. Polynomial regression fits a nonlinear ...

of order up to 6. After finishing her doctorate she moved to

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a population of 1.4 million in the Urban area of Copenhagen, urban area. The city is situated on the islands of Zealand and Amager, separated from Malmö, Sweden, by the ...

, where she worked as a researcher for the Commission for Ocean Research 1918 to 1924 and with Johannes Schmidt at the Carlsberg Laboratory from 1920 to 1921. She eventually left research after obtaining her teaching credentials to become a high school teacher.

Selected statistical papers

*Smith, K. (1916). On the ‘best’ values of the constants in frequency distributions. ''Biometrika'', ''11''(3), 262–276. *Smith, K. (1918). On the standard deviations of adjusted and interpolated values of an observed polynomial function and its constants and the guidance they give towards a proper choice of the distribution of observations. ''Biometrika'', ''12''(1/2), 1–85. *Smith, K. (1922).The standard deviations of fraternal and parental correlation coefficients. ''Biometrika'', ''14''(1/2), 1–22.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Smith, Kirstine Women statisticians People from Morsø Municipality Danish statisticians Danish women scientists University of Copenhagen alumni Alumni of University College London 1878 births 1939 deaths 20th-century Danish scientists 20th-century Danish mathematicians 20th-century women mathematicians Carlsberg Laboratory staff