Martin Wilk Explained

Martin Wilk should not be confused with Martin Wilke.

Martin Wilk
Office:Chief Statistician of Canada
Predecessor:James L. Fry (interim)
Successor:Ivan Fellegi
Term Start:1980
Term End:1985
Birth Date:18 December 1922
Birth Place:Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Death Place:Yorba Linda, California

Martin Bradbury Wilk, (18 December 1922 – 19 February 2013)[1] [2] was a Canadian statistician, academic, and the former chief statistician of Canada. In 1965, together with Samuel Shapiro, he developed the Shapiro–Wilk test, which can indicate whether a sample of numbers would be unusual if it came from a Gaussian distribution. With Ramanathan Gnanadesikan he developed a number of important graphical techniques for data analysis, including the Q–Q plot and P–P plot.

Education and career

Born in Montreal, Quebec, he received a bachelor of engineering degree in chemical engineering from McGill University in 1945. From 1945 to 1950, he was a research chemical engineer on the Atomic Energy Project at the National Research Council of Canada. From 1951 to 1955, he was a research associate, instructor, and assistant professor at Iowa State University, where he received a Master of Science in statistics in 1953 and a Ph.D. in statistics in 1955 under the supervision of Oscar Kempthorne. From 1955 to 1957, he was a research associate and assistant director of the Statistical Techniques Research Group at Princeton University. From 1959 to 1963, he was a professor and director of research in statistics at Rutgers University.[1]

In 1956, he joined Bell Telephone Laboratories and in 1970 joined American Telephone and Telegraph Company. From 1976 to 1980, he was the assistant vice president-director of corporate planning. From 1980 to 1985, he was the chief statistician of Canada.[1]

In 1981, he was appointed an adjunct professor of statistics at Carleton University.

In 1962 he was elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association.[3] In 1999, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada for his "insightful guidance on important matters related to our country's national statistical system".[1]

See also

References

Notes and References

  1. News: Martin B. Wilk . The Ottawa Citizen . February 23, 2013 . Ottawa, Ontario, Canada . 59 . . November 5, 2020.
  2. News: Lennick. Michael. Martin Wilk remembered as 'the best statistician in Canada's history'. 24 November 2013. The Globe and Mail. 10 April 2013.
  3. http://www.amstat.org/awards/fellowslist.cfm View/Search Fellows of the ASA