Wilfrid Joseph Dixon (December 13, 1915 – September 20, 2008) was an American

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change. History On ...

and

statistician A statistician is a person who works with theoretical or applied statistics. The profession exists in both the private and public sectors. It is common to combine statistical knowledge with expertise in other subjects, and statisticians may wor ...

. He made notable contributions to

nonparametric statistics Nonparametric statistics is the branch of statistics that is not based solely on parametrized families of probability distributions (common examples of parameters are the mean and variance). Nonparametric statistics is based on either being distr ...

, statistical education and

experimental design The design of experiments (DOE, DOX, or experimental design) is the design of any task that aims to describe and explain the variation of information under conditions that are hypothesized to reflect the variation. The term is generally associ ...

. A native of

Portland, Oregon Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populous co ...

, Dixon received a bachelor's degree in mathematics from

Oregon State College Oregon State University (OSU) is a public land-grant, research university in Corvallis, Oregon. OSU offers more than 200 undergraduate-degree programs along with a variety of graduate and doctoral degrees. It has the 10th largest engineering col ...

in 1938. He continued his graduate studies at the

University of Wisconsin–Madison A university () is an educational institution, institution of higher education, higher (or Tertiary education, tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several Discipline (academia), academic disciplines. Universities ty ...

, where he earned a master's degree in 1939. Under supervision of

Samuel S. Wilks Samuel Stanley Wilks (June 17, 1906 – March 7, 1964) was an American mathematician and academic who played an important role in the development of mathematical statistics, especially in regard to practical applications. Early life and edu ...

, he then earned a Ph.D. in mathematical statistics from Princeton in 1944. During

World War II 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 opposin ...

, he was an operations analyst on

Guam Guam (; ch, Guåhan ) is an organized, unincorporated territory of the United States in the Micronesia subregion of the western Pacific Ocean. It is the westernmost point and territory of the United States (reckoned from the geographic cent ...

. Dixon was on the faculties at

Oklahoma Oklahoma (; Choctaw language, Choctaw: ; chr, ᎣᎧᎳᎰᎹ, ''Okalahoma'' ) is a U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States, bordered by Texas on the south and west, Kansas on the nor ...

(1942–1943),

Oregon Oregon () is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of it ...

(1946–1955), and

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...

(1955–1986, then emeritus). While at Oregon, Dixon (together with A.M. Mood) described and provided theory and estimation methods for the adaptive Up-and-Down experimental design, which was new and poorly documented at the time. This article became the cornerstone publication for up-and-down, a family of designs used in many scientific, engineering and medical fields, and to which Dixon continued to contribute in later years. In 1951 Dixon, together with Frank Massey, published a statistics textbook - the first such textbook intended to a non-mathematical audience. In 1955 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 the 1960s at UCLA, Dixon developed BMDP, a statistical software package for biomedical analyses. His daughter,

Janet D. Elashoff Janet Dixon Elashoff is a retired American statistician, formerly the director of biostatistics for Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and professor of biomathematics at the University of California, Los Angeles. Early life Janet Dixon was the daughter ...

, is also a statistician who became a UCLA faculty member, and an ASA fellow in 1978. In December 2008 she funded the W. J. Dixon Award for Excellence in Statistical Consulting of the American Statistical Association in his honor.

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* {{DEFAULTSORT:Dixon, Wilfred 1915 births 2008 deaths Scientists from Portland, Oregon American statisticians Oregon State University alumni University of Wisconsin–Madison alumni Princeton University alumni University of California, Los Angeles faculty Fellows of the American Statistical Association