Frank Anscombe

Short description: English statistician

Francis Anscombe

Born| (1918-05-13)13 May 1918

Hove, East Sussex, UK

Died| 17 October 2001(2001-10-17) (aged 83)

New Haven, Connecticut, USA[1]

Citizenship| United Kingdom
Alma mater| Trinity College, Cambridge
Known for| Analysis of residuals
Anscombe's quartet
Anscombe transform
Scientific career
Fields| Statistician
Institutions| University of Cambridge
Rothamsted Experimental Station
Princeton University
Yale University

Francis John Anscombe (13 May 1918 – 17 October 2001) was an English statistician.

## Contents

* 1 Education and career
* 2 Research
* 3 Personal life
* 4 References
* 5 External links

## Education and career

Born in Hove in England, Anscombe was educated at Trinity College at Cambridge University. After serving in the Second World War, he joined Rothamsted Experimental Station for two years before returning to Cambridge as a lecturer.

In experiments, Anscombe emphasized randomization in both the design and analysis phases. In the design phase, Anscombe argued that the experimenters should randomize the labels of blocks.[2][3] In the analysis phase, Anscombe argued that the randomization plan should guide the analysis of data; Anscombe's approach has influenced John Nelder and R. A. Bailey in particular.

Anscombe moved to Princeton University in 1956, and in the same year he was elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association.[4] He became the founding chairman of the statistics department at Yale University in 1963.[5][6]

## Research

Anscombe illustrated the importance of graphing data with these four data sets.

According to David Cox, his best-known work may be his 1961 account of formal properties of residuals in linear regression.[6][7] His earlier suggestion for a variance-stabilizing transformation for Poisson data is often known as the Anscombe transform.[8]

He later became interested in statistical computing, and stressed that "a computer should make both calculations and graphs", and illustrated the importance of graphing data with four data sets now known as Anscombe's quartet.[9] He later published a textbook on statistical computing in APL.[10]

In economics and decision theory, Anscombe is best known for a 1963 paper with Robert Aumann which provides the standard basis for the theory of subjective probability.[11]

## Personal life

Anscombe was brother-in-law to another well-known statistician, John Tukey of Princeton University; their wives were sisters.[6]

## References

1. ↑ Saxon, Wolfgang (2001-10-25). "Francis John Anscombe, 83, Mathematician and Professor" (in en-US). The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. https://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/25/nyregion/francis-john-anscombe-83-mathematician-and-professor.html.
2. ↑ Anscombe, F. J. (1948). "The Validity of Comparative Experiments". Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series A (General) 111 (3): 181–211. doi:10.2307/2984159.
3. ↑ Caliński, Tadeusz; Kageyama, Sanpei (2000). Block designs: A Randomization approach, Volume I: Analysis. Lecture Notes in Statistics. 150. New York: Springer-Verlag. ISBN 0-387-98578-6. https://archive.org/details/blockdesignsrand0002cali.
4. ↑ View/Search Fellows of the ASA , accessed 2016-07-23.
5. ↑ Saxon, Wolfgang (25 October 2001). "Francis John Anscombe, 83, Mathematician and Professor". The New York Times. https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D01E6DD1231F936A15753C1A9679C8B63. Retrieved 2010-05-02.
6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Cox, D. R. (2003). "Frank Anscombe". Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series D 52 (4): 679. doi:10.1046/j.0039-0526.2003.02064.x.
7. ↑ Anscombe, F. J.; Tukey, J. W. (1963). "The Examination and Analysis of Residuals". Technometrics (Technometrics, Vol. 5, No. 2) 5 (2): 141–160. doi:10.2307/1266059.
8. ↑ Anscombe, F. J. (1948). "The Transformation of Poisson, Binomial and Negative-Binomial Data". Biometrika 35 (3–4): 246–254. doi:10.1093/biomet/35.3-4.246.
9. ↑ Anscombe, F. J. (1973). "Graphs in Statistical Analysis". The American Statistician 27 (1): 17–21. doi:10.2307/2682899.
10. ↑ Anscombe, F. J. (1981). Computing in Statistical Science through APL. New York: Springer-Verlag. ISBN 3-540-90549-9. https://archive.org/details/computinginstati0000ansc.
11. ↑ "Anscombe, Aumann: A Definition of Subjective Probability". https://projecteuclid.org/journals/annals-of-mathematical-statistics/volume-34/issue-1/A-Definition-of-Subjective-Probability/10.1214/aoms/1177704255.full.

* "Noted statistician Francis J. Anscombe dies". Yale Bulletin & Calendar 30 (9). 2001-11-02. Archived from the original on 11 September 2015. https://web.archive.org/web/20150911055933/http://www.yale.edu/opa/arc-ybc/v30.n9/story11.html.

## External links

* Frank Anscombe at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
* Francis John Anscombe Papers. Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library.

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