HISTORY OF THE SCHOOL (by Bernard Lindgren)
In 1950, Statistics as a discipline was represented formally only by a program in
the Graduate School, under the direction of a committee of faculty members from
various departments where teaching and research in Statistics had been going on,
including Economics, Agriculture, Educational Psychology, Public Health (Division
of Biostatistics), Mathematics, Industrial Engineering.
The PhD program had been established in 1943, and a Master's program in 1947. The first
PhD degree was granted in 1945 - the only one prior to 1950, although nine more were
granted prior to 1958, when a Department of Statistics was established in the College
of Liberal Arts. The first department chair was Palmer Johnson, followed in quick
succession (after Prof. Johnson's untimely death) by Ingram Olkin, Richard Savage,
Leonid Hurwicz (on loan from Economics) and, in 1963, by Bernard Lindgren.
With so many preexisting elementary statistics courses being taught in the various
areas of application represented on the graduate committee, the small department
offered initially only some courses at the graduate level. In 1963, with a faculty
of six, the Department of Statistics took over the three first courses in statistical
theory, which had been offered by Economics, IT Math, and CLA Math, as well as the
IT Math course in statistics for engineers. The department soon established also a
number of other courses at the undergraduate level. A bachelor's degree program
was established about 1965, offered through CLA, the first BA being awarded in
1968. A BS program, offering a degree through the Institute of Technology, was
approved in 1972. In the period from 1950 to 1998, 154 PhD degrees in Statistics
were awarded.
In 1969, the School of Agriculture and the Agricultural Extension Service made
a move to establish a department of statistics in St. Paul, to serve their needs
in consultation and teaching. They and the various other faculties involved in
statistics, at Vice-president Shepherd's behest, resolved the issue by proposing
a School of Statistics, with presence on both Campuses: St. Paul
( Department of Applied Statistics ) and
Minneapolis (Department of Theoretical
Statistics). This was established in 1970. Several positions in St. Paul were
set up as A-appointments with partial support from the Agricultural Experiment
Station. Those holding these positions are responsible for statistical consultation
as part of their duties. A third wing of the School of Statistics was the
Statistical
Consulting Center, a focal point for campus-wide statistical consulting needs,
including a Statistical Clinic, available for assisting both graduate students and
faculty throughout the University. In 1971, Seymour Geisser joined the University
as Director of the School of Statistics, continuing in that position to the present
time and guiding the School as it grew to a faculty of 19. In recent years the
School has been recognized as among the leaders in the field.
In 1993 the National Research Council ranked the School of Statistics
13 among all US Department of Statistics and in the top 10 among public
Universities.
The development of teaching and research in statistics at Minnesota occurred during
the period when similar developments were underway in many other universities in
the United States. Early Statistical Laboratories were established at Iowa State
(1933) and California at Berkeley (1938). Some of the earlier departments of statistics
are those established at George Washington University (1935), Iowa State (1947),
Stanford (1948), North Carolina State (1941), North Carolina (1944), Virginia Polytechnic
Institute (1949). The next two decades saw the establishment of departments of
statistics at most of the larger universities, recognizing the rapidly increasing
role of statistics in government, industry, and research generally, as well as the
rapidly growing body of work on the foundations and theory of statistics that
established statistics as a discipline not subsumed as a branch of applied mathematics or
a particular field of application.
In the 50's and 60's, statistical computations were still often carried out on
mechanical calculators, although slow and bulky electronic computers were becoming
ever more available. The subsequent developments in electronic computing - in speed,
miniturization, and storage, have had an enormous impact on the teaching of statistics,
giving free rein to simulation, Bayesian, and likelihood method that had been available
in principle, but restrained by computational difficulties. Research in the School
of Statistics at Minnesota has kept apace with these developments and its research
is in the forefront.
THE FACULTY
PICTURE GALLERY (under construction)
Picture 1
Picture 2
Picture 3
