STATISTICIANS IN HISTORY
Walter A. Shewhart,
1891–1967
In 1967, W. Edwards Deming wrote a per-
sonal biography on Walter Shewhart for The
American Statistician. The following is taken
from that article.
I
write as one outside the Bell
System who had the privilege
of working intimately with
[Walter] Shewhart over a period
of years. This could happen only
because he was always glad to
help anyone. Actually, he never
thought of himself as helping Photos provided by Shewhart’s
anyone; he was simply glad to great-grandson, Darin Sekulic, and
talk and absorb thoughts from
granddaughter, Joanne Sekulic
anyone [who] was genuinely
struggling to improve his under-
standing of the statistical meth-
od—interchanging ideas was his
way to put it. And, to Shewhart,
“
It is his knowledge and use of
it was the statistical method in
the singular, not in the plural.
the theory of probability that Statistical methods are necessary,
distinguishes the statistician from
but they are the tools and pass-
words by which the statistician
the expert in chemistry, agri-
works and communicates in
applying the statistical method.
culture, bacteriology, medicine,
It was Shewhart who empha-
production, consumer research,
sized the theory of probability as
the tool of the statistician. It is his
engineering, or anything else
”
.
knowledge and use of the theory
of probability that distinguishes
the statistician from the expert
in chemistry, agriculture, bacte-
riology, medicine, production,
SEPTEMbER 2009 AMSTAT NEwS 19
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