George Alfred Barnard (23 September 1915 – 9 August 2002) was a British statistician known particularly for his work on the foundations of statistics and on quality control.
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
. His father was a
cabinet maker
A cabinet is a case or cupboard with shelves and/or drawers for storing or displaying items. Some cabinets are stand alone while others are built in to a wall or are attached to it like a medicine cabinet. Cabinets are typically made of wood (so ...
and his mother had been a
domestic servant
A domestic worker or domestic servant is a person who works within the scope of a residence. The term "domestic service" applies to the equivalent occupational category. In traditional English contexts, such a person was said to be "in service ...
. George's sister
Dorothy Wedderburn
Dorothy Enid Wedderburn (née Barnard, formerly Cole; 18 September 1925 – 20 September 2012)Royal Holloway, University of London. George attended the local grammar school, the Monoux School, and from there he won a scholarship to St John's College, Cambridge to read mathematics. In 1937 he went on to
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...
to do graduate work on mathematical logic with
Alonzo Church
Alonzo Church (June 14, 1903 – August 11, 1995) was an American mathematician, computer scientist, logician, philosopher, professor and editor who made major contributions to mathematical logic and the foundations of theoretical computer scien ...
.
Barnard was on holiday in Britain when the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...
started and he never went back to Princeton to finish his PhD. The war made Barnard into a statistician as it did for many mathematicians of his generation. In 1940 he joined an engineering firm,
Plessey
The Plessey Company plc was a British electronics, defence and telecommunications company. It originated in 1917, growing and diversifying into electronics. It expanded after World War II by acquisition of companies and formed overseas compani ...
, as a mathematical consultant. In 1942 he moved to the Ministry of Supply to apply quality control and sampling methods to the products for which they were responsible. It was there that Barnard began doing statistics. The group he was put in charge of included Peter Armitage,
Dennis Lindley
Dennis Victor Lindley (25 July 1923 – 14 December 2013) was an English statistician, decision theorist and leading advocate of Bayesian statistics.
Biography
Lindley grew up in the south-west London suburb of Surbiton. He was an only child an ...
and Robin Plackett. Lindley recalls that they were like students working for a doctorate with Barnard as supervisor.
Abraham Wald
Abraham Wald (; hu, Wald Ábrahám, yi, אברהם וואַלד; – ) was a Jewish Hungarian mathematician who contributed to decision theory, geometry, and econometrics and founded the field of statistical sequential analysis. One ...
was in a similar group in the United States. Both groups developed sequential methods of sampling.
At the end of the war, Barnard went to
Imperial College London
Imperial College London (legally Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom. Its history began with Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, who developed his vision for a cu ...
, as a lecturer, becoming a reader in 1948 and professor of mathematical statistics in 1954. In 1961 he was elected as a
Fellow of the American Statistical Association
Like many other academic professional societies, the American Statistical Association (ASA) uses the title of Fellow of the American Statistical Association as its highest honorary grade of membership. The number of new fellows per year is limited ...
. In 1966 he moved to the newly created
University of Essex
The University of Essex is a public research university in Essex, England. Established by royal charter in 1965, Essex is one of the original plate glass universities. Essex's shield consists of the ancient arms attributed to the Kingdom of Es ...
, from which he retired in 1975. Barnard, however, kept on doing statistics until he died aged 86. Until 1981 he spent much of each year at the
University of Waterloo
The University of Waterloo (UWaterloo, UW, or Waterloo) is a public research university with a main campus in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is on of land adjacent to "Uptown" Waterloo and Waterloo Park. The university also operates ...
,
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
, and after that he continued writing papers and corresponding with colleagues all over the world.
Barnard's best known contribution is probably his 1962 paper on likelihood inference but the paper he thought his best was the 1949 paper in which he first espoused the
likelihood principle In statistics, the likelihood principle is the proposition that, given a statistical model, all the evidence in a sample relevant to model parameters is contained in the likelihood function.
A likelihood function arises from a probability density f ...
. He had originally described the principle in the context of optional stopping. A statement by
Savage
Savage may refer to:
Places Antarctica
* Savage Glacier, Ellsworth Land
* Savage Nunatak, Marie Byrd Land
* Savage Ridge, Victoria Land
United States
* Savage, Maryland, an unincorporated community
* Savage, Minnesota, a city
* Savage, Mi ...
brings out how surprising the principle first seemed
I learned the stopping rule principle from Professor Barnard in ... 1952. Frankly, I then thought it a scandal that anyone in the profession could advance an idea so patently wrong, even as today I can scarcely believe that some people resist an idea so patently right.
In an interview Barnard recalled, "my main interest above everything was politics from about 1933 until 1956. Well, that’s not true – until the end of the war it would be fair to say."
At school he proposed the motion to the school debating society that "Socialism is preferable to Capitalism." He joined the
Communist Party
A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term ''communist party'' was popularized by the title of ''The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. ...
in 1933 and he took part in anti-fascist marches in the east end of London.
A fellow activist recalls him as a "lean-and-hungry-looking mathematician from a working class family" who served as the "student Party's chief local commissar." At Plessey he was chairman of the shop stewards.
Barnard served terms as president of three societies: Operational Research Society in 1962–1964, the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications in 1970–1971, and the
Royal Statistical Society
The Royal Statistical Society (RSS) is an established statistical society. It has three main roles: a British learned society for statistics, a professional body for statisticians and a charity which promotes statistics for the public good.
...
in 1971–1972. He was awarded the
Guy Medal
The Guy Medals are awarded by the Royal Statistical Society in three categories; Gold, Silver and Bronze. The Silver and Bronze medals are awarded annually. The Gold Medal was awarded every three years between 1987 and 2011, but is awarded biennia ...
in Gold by the Royal Statistical Society in 1975.
In May 1986 Barnard was awarded an
honorary degree
An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding institution) has waived all of the usual requirements. It is also known by the Latin phrases ''honoris causa'' ("for the sake of the honour") or ''ad hon ...
by the
Open University
The Open University (OU) is a British public research university and the largest university in the United Kingdom by number of students. The majority of the OU's undergraduate students are based in the United Kingdom and principally study off- ...
as Doctor of the university and in 1994 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the
University of Essex
The University of Essex is a public research university in Essex, England. Established by royal charter in 1965, Essex is one of the original plate glass universities. Essex's shield consists of the ancient arms attributed to the Kingdom of Es ...
.
Lindley wrote in ''The Statistician'', "We have lost a great statistician and a delightful human being."
Personal life
He married first, Helen J.B. Davis in 1942 and they had three sons. He married second, Mary M.L. Jones in 1949 and they had one son.
He was the brother of the social scientist
Dorothy Wedderburn
Dorothy Enid Wedderburn (née Barnard, formerly Cole; 18 September 1925 – 20 September 2012)British Humanist Association
Humanists UK, known from 1967 until May 2017 as the British Humanist Association (BHA), is a charitable organisation which promotes secular humanism and aims to represent "people who seek to live good lives without religious or superstitious b ...
.
Publications
*
*
*
*
*
* – This contains a review of Barnard's work by Lindley. The volume was one of a series honouring Bayesian heroes. There is a bibliography (citing 109 articles) up to 1989.
In 1990 he made a book out of manuscripts left by his friend Egon Pearson:
*
After 1990 Barnard published little, although he kept up his letter writing. In 1996 however he produced a review of Barndorff-Nielsen and Cox after observing that, "A great virtue of the book is that it raises perhaps as many questions as it answers," Barnard went on to give his answer to one of those questions:
*
List of University of Waterloo people
The University of Waterloo, located in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, is a comprehensive public university that was founded in 1957 by Drs. Gerry Hagey and Ira G. Needles. It has grown into an institution of more than 42,000 students, faculty, and ...