Statistics Captures
Unpredictability of Real World
Corydon Ireland, Harvard News Office
Reprinted courtesy of the Harvard Gazette
University of Iowa established the first college department of sta-
tistics—to analyze data about farm crops.
Since 1957, Harvard’s statistics faculty members have played
an increasingly hub-like interdisciplinary role, collecting and inter-
preting data for a wide variety of disciplines.
With only 9.5 positions presently, Harvard’s statistics faculty
also reached more than 1,200 undergraduates in a variety of courses
last year, and projects higher figures for the future. They also teach
or provide technical support in medicine; law; business; economics;
and the life, physical, and social sciences.
Every scholar collects information, and then has to make deci-
sions. That means dealing with both the information and the
uncertainties it engenders. In turn, statisticians provide a mathe-
matical language to deal with uncertainties, said Meng. They create
models to uncover patterns in the data—“mathematical indicators
of real phenomena,” he said.
Meng, himself, is providing statistical insight to projects on the
regional effects of global warming, astrophysics, and visual signal
processing. He’s also designing a way to inferentially estimate miss-
ing data in a large-scale mental health survey.
Xiao-Li Meng, chair of the Department of Statistics, wel-
Academic statisticians elsewhere work on models that will help
comes visitors to the first day of a two-day colloquium judge musical compositions, analyze literature, and simulate tex-
celebrating the 50th anniversary of Harvard’s Statistics tures in video.
Department.
At Harvard, Samuel Kou, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of
Staff photo Justin Ide/Harvard News Office
Natural Sciences in the Statistics Department, is helping investigate
H
arvard’s small but active statistics department recently cel- the biophysics of a single-molecule protein—breakthrough work
ebrated its 50th anniversary. There were two days of lec- featured in one of the conference’s dozen research posters.
tures and panels at the Gutman Conference Center and a At the celebratory conference, there were technical talks that
noisy, social, and musical banquet at the Harvard Club of Boston. looked at statistical inference, Bayesian computation, and the
The statistics faculty wants the rest of us to know how useful EM algorithm.
their science is in a world of proliferating information. Having a lot Other talks provided historical perspective on statistics since
of data requires a scientific way to organize and analyze it to make the days of the Eisenhower White House and Sputnik, when
informed decisions. Harvard’s experts were holed up in the old Reliance Bank building
They also want us to know how far statistics has come since on Dunster Street.
1957, that its methods are better than ever at capturing the com- There were retrospectives on two of the original five faculty
plexity and unpredictability of the real world. And they want us to members who have since passed away, William Cochran and
know how widely employed statistics are at Harvard in virtually Frederick Mosteller. (It was Mosteller’s veiled threat to move on
every academic division, said Statistics Department Chair Xiao-Li to The University of Chicago that prompted action on forming a
Meng. He and his colleagues are assisting biologists, physicians, department at Harvard.)
chemists, engineers—and even historians. During the conference, there were also frequent expressions of
Meng likes to quote the late John Tukey, a statistics pioneer at how widely useful statistics is to both intellectual pursuits and prac-
Princeton: “We get to play in everybody’s backyard.” tical applications.
On February 12, 1957, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences for- Statistics scholars are at their best “when solving real-world
mally voted to approve Harvard’s new Department of Statistics. problems,” said one-time federal litigator D. James Greiner II,
There were just two minutes of discussion. who earned a Harvard PhD in statistics this year and is now an
It was among the first such university departments, preceded assistant professor of law at Harvard Law School and a Statistics
by Stanford, Berkeley, and a few others. In the United States, the Department affiliate.
10 AMSTAT NEWS MAY 2008
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