Helen Louise MacGillivray is an Australian statistician and statistics educator. She is the former president of the

International Statistical Institute The International Statistical Institute (ISI) is a professional association of statisticians. It was founded in 1885, although there had been international statistical congresses since 1853. The institute has about 4,000 elected members from gov ...

, the

International Association for Statistical Education The International Association for Statistical Education (IASE) is a section of the International Statistical Institute (ISI), a professional association of statisticians, devoted to statistics education. It was founded in 1991 as an outgrowth of t ...

, and the Statistical Society of Australia, and chair of the

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and international security, security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be ...

Global Network of Institutions for Statistical Training.

Education and career

MacGillivray entered her studies at the

University of Queensland , mottoeng = By means of knowledge and hard work , established = , endowment = A$224.3 million , budget = A$2.1 billion , type = Public research university , chancellor = Peter Varghese , vice_chancellor = Deborah Terry , city = B ...

planning to work in physics, but ended up earning a bachelor's degree with honours in mathematics, in the course of which she discovered her love for statistics. She remained at the University of Queensland for graduate study, and completed a Ph.D. in statistics there. Her dissertation was ''Moment inequalities with applications to particle size distributions''. She was a professor of statistics and director of the Maths Access Centre at

Queensland University of Technology Queensland University of Technology (QUT) is a public research university located in the urban coastal city of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. QUT is located on two campuses in the Brisbane area viz. Gardens Point and Kelvin Grove. The univ ...

(QUT), until her retirement. She continues to hold an adjunct professorship at QUT.

Service

MacGillivray is the editor of the journal ''Teaching Statistics''. She was president of the International Statistical Institute for the 2017–2019 term. When she was elected president she became both the second woman and the second Australian to hold the position, after

Denise Lievesley Denise Anne Lievesley is a British social statistician. She has formerly been Chief Executive of the English Information Centre for Health and Social Care, Director of Statistics at UNESCO, in which capacity she founded the UNESCO Institute for ...

and

Dennis Trewin Dennis John Trewin (born 14 August 1946) is an Australian former public servant, who was the Australian Statistician, the head of the Australian Bureau of Statistics, between July 2000 and January 2007. Trewin joined the ABS in 1966 as a stati ...

. She was the first female president of the Statistical Society of Australia. She was president of the

for 2009–2011, and is the founding chair of the Global Network of Institutions for Statistical Training of the

Books

With Peter Petocz, MacGillivray is the coauthor of the two-volume textbook ''Statistics and Probability in the Australian Curriculum'' (Years 7 and 8, and Years 9 and 10), and is the author of ''Utts & Heckard's Mind on Statistics'' (Nelson Australia, 2010, adapted from previous work by

Jessica Utts Jessica Utts (born 1952) is a parapsychologist and statistics professor at the University of California, Irvine. She is known for her textbooks on statistics and her investigation into remote viewing.Robert Todd Carroll. (2003). '' The Skeptic's ...

and Robert Heckard).

Recognition

MacGillivray is a Fellow of 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. ...

, an Australian Learning and Teaching Fellow, an honorary life member of the Statistical Society of Australia, and a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:MacGillivray, Helen Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Australian statisticians Women statisticians Statistics educators University of Queensland alumni Queensland University of Technology faculty Presidents of the International Statistical Institute Fellows of the Royal Statistical Society