Linda Williams Pickle (born July 19, 1948) is an American statistician and expert in

spatial analysis Spatial analysis or spatial statistics includes any of the formal techniques which studies entities using their topological, geometric, or geographic properties. Spatial analysis includes a variety of techniques, many still in their early deve ...

and

data visualization Data and information visualization (data viz or info viz) is an interdisciplinary field that deals with the graphic representation of data and information. It is a particularly efficient way of communicating when the data or information is num ...

, especially as applied to disease patterns. She worked as a researcher for the

National Cancer Institute The National Cancer Institute (NCI) coordinates the United States National Cancer Program and is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is one of eleven agencies that are part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. ...

, for

Georgetown University Georgetown University is a private university, private research university in the Georgetown (Washington, D.C.), Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded by Bishop John Carroll (archbishop of Baltimore), John Carroll in 1789 as Georg ...

, and for the

National Center for Health Statistics The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) is a U.S. government agency that provides statistical information to guide actions and policies to improve the public health of the American people. It is a unit of the Centers for Disease Control ...

before becoming a statistics consultant and adjunct professor of geography and public health services at

Pennsylvania State University The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a Public university, public Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related Land-grant university, land-grant research university with campuses and facilities throughout Pennsylvan ...

Education and career

Pickle was born in Hampton Virginia but grew up in central Maryland. She attended Harford Community College and then transferred to

Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hem ...

where she majored in quantitative studies. She graduated in their first co-educational class in 1974 with honors (Phi Beta Kappa), and then completed a Ph.D. in

biostatistics Biostatistics (also known as biometry) are the development and application of statistical methods to a wide range of topics in biology. It encompasses the design of biological experiments, the collection and analysis of data from those experime ...

at Johns Hopkins in 1977. She worked as a biostatistician at the

(NCI) from 1977 to 1988, analyzing environmental epidemiology studies and producing the second generation of NCI cancer atlases that included modeled time trend maps. She then served as an adjunct assistant professor and research associate professor of community and family medicine at

from 1983 to 1991, where she directed the biostatistics unit of the Vincent T. Lombardi Cancer Research Center from 1988 to 1991. She was a mathematical statistician at the

from 1991 to 1999, and was project director for the center's ''Atlas of United States Mortality'' project which included cognitive research into how people read data from maps. She returned to the National Cancer Institute as a senior mathematical statistician from 1999 to 2007, before retiring to become owner and chief statistician of a consulting firm, StatNet Consulting. While at NCI, she started their geographic information systems (GIS) program and developed statistical models to examine spatial patterns of cancer. Her model to predict the number of new cancer cases is used by the American Cancer Society for their annual cancer report.

Books

Pickle is lead author of the books ''Atlas of U.S. Cancer Mortality Among Whites, 1950-1980'' (National Cancer Institute, 1987), ''Atlas of U.S. Cancer Mortality Among Nonwhites, 1950-1980'' (National Cancer Institute, 1990), ''Atlas of United States Mortality'' (National Center for Health Statistics, 1996) and coauthor of ''Visualizing Data Patterns with Micromaps'' with Daniel B. Carr (Chapman & Hall/CRC, 2010). In addition, she has published over 100 articles and numerous book chapters in the medical and statistical literature. Her work has been cited over 11,000 times.

Recognition

Pickle's 1996 Atlas received the International Blue Pencil Award for Best Illustrated Book in 1997 from the National Association of Government Communicators and a CDC Health Communications Award the same year. In 1997 she also received the Elijah White Memorial Award from the National Center for Health Statistics. In 2006 she received the ESRI Vision Award for her pioneering work applying GIS to health. Pickle 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 2000.

References

External links

Web site for ''Visualizing Data Patterns with Micromaps''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pickle, Linda Williams Living people American statisticians Women statisticians Johns Hopkins University alumni Fellows of the American Statistical Association 1948 births