Kirstine Smith (April 12, 1878 – November 11, 1939) was a Danish

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 w ...

. She is credited with the creation of the field of optimal design of experiments.

Background

Smith grew up in the town of Nykøbing Mors,

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. In 1903, she graduated from the

University of Copenhagen The University of Copenhagen ( da, Københavns Universitet, KU) is a prestigious public university, public research university in Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark. Founded in 1479, the University of Copenhagen is the second-oldest university in ...

with a degree in mathematics and physics. After, she worked as secretary to astronomer and statistician

Thorvald Thiele Thorvald Nicolai Thiele (24 December 1838 – 26 September 1910) was a Danish astronomer and director of the Copenhagen Observatory. He was also an actuary and mathematician, most notable for his work in statistics, interpolation and the three-b ...

Gumpertz, M.L. Thumbnail biography of Kirstine Smith (Accessed 23 August 2013).
/ref> and later with the

International Council for the Exploration of the Sea The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES; french: Conseil International de l'Exploration de la Mer, ''CIEM'') is a regional fishery advisory body and the world's oldest intergovernmental science organization. ICES is headqua ...

for which she authored several volumes on fish populations.Crary Group (Accessed 23 August 2013 via Google archive).
In 1916, Smith was admitted for doctoral training at the

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in post-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degr ...

where

Karl Pearson Karl Pearson (; born Carl Pearson; 27 March 1857 – 27 April 1936) was an English mathematician and biostatistician. He has been credited with establishing the discipline of mathematical statistics. He founded the world's first university st ...

had founded the first university statistics department. She was a student of Pearson who described her as “brilliant” in a letter to Ronald Fisher. At London, she produced an influential paper in the journal

Biometrika ''Biometrika'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal published by Oxford University Press for thBiometrika Trust The editor-in-chief is Paul Fearnhead ( Lancaster University). The principal focus of this journal is theoretical statistics. It was ...

on minimum chi-squared estimation of the correlation coefficient. Disagreements about aspects of her work led to increased friction between Pearson and Fisher. In her dissertation, which was published in 1918 (see below), she invented

optimal design In the design of experiments, optimal designs (or optimum designs) are a class of experimental designs that are optimal with respect to some statistical criterion. The creation of this field of statistics has been credited to Danish statistic ...

where she computed G-optimal designs for polynomial regression of order up to 6. After finishing her doctorate she moved to

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan a ...

, where she worked as a researcher for the Commission for Ocean Research 1918 to 1924 and with Johannes Schmidt at the

Carlsberg Laboratory The Carlsberg Research Laboratory is a private scientific research center in Copenhagen, Denmark under the Carlsberg Group. It was founded in 1875 by J. C. Jacobsen, the founder of the Carlsberg brewery, with the purpose of advancing biochemica ...

from 1920 to 1921. She eventually left research after obtaining her teaching credentials to become a high school teacher.

Selected statistical papers

*Smith, K. (1916). On the ‘best’ values of the constants in frequency distributions. ''Biometrika'', ''11''(3), 262–276. *Smith, K. (1918). On the standard deviations of adjusted and interpolated values of an observed polynomial function and its constants and the guidance they give towards a proper choice of the distribution of observations. ''Biometrika'', ''12''(1/2), 1–85. *Smith, K. (1922).The standard deviations of fraternal and parental correlation coefficients. ''Biometrika'', ''14''(1/2), 1–22.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Smith, Kirstine Women statisticians People from Morsø Municipality Danish statisticians Danish women scientists University of Copenhagen alumni Alumni of University College London 1878 births 1939 deaths 20th-century Danish scientists 20th-century Danish mathematicians 20th-century women mathematicians