George W. Snedecor

George Waddel Snedecor (October 20, 1881 – February 15, 1974) was an American mathematician and statistician. He contributed to the development of analysis of variance, data analysis, experimental design, and statistical methodology. Snedecor's F-distribution and the George W. Snedecor Award of the American Statistical Association are named for him.

George W. Snedecor
Born	(1881-10-20)October 20, 1881 Memphis, Tennessee, US
Died	February 15, 1974(1974-02-15) (aged 92) Amherst, Massachusetts, US
Education	University of Alabama University of Michigan
Known for	Snedecor's F-distribution
Awards	Wilks Memorial Award (1970)
Scientific career
Fields	Statistics, biometrics
Institutions	Iowa State University
Doctoral students	Gertrude Mary Cox

Early life

Born in Memphis, Tennessee, into a Presbyterian family which was prominent socially and involved with southern Democratic politics, Snedecor grew up in Florida and Alabama where his lawyer father relocated himself, wife and children in order to fulfill a personal and radical religious calling to minister to evangelize and educate the poor.^{[1][unreliable source?]} George was the son of James G. Snedecor and Emily Alston Estes (daughter of Memphis lawyer Bedford Mitchell Estes); he was nephew of William J. Dodd, an architect, and his wife Ione Estes Dodd.

Education and career

Snedecor studied mathematics and physics at Auburn University and University of Alabama, where he graduated with a BS in 1905. After teaching jobs at Selma Military Academy and Austin College in Sherman, Texas, he continued his study in physics at the University of Michigan, where he received an MSc in 1913.^[2]

Snedecor relocated to Iowa State University in 1913, where he became a professor of mathematics. He initiated the first academic department of statistics in the United States, at Iowa State University in 1947, and created the first statistics laboratory in the U.S. there. He was a pioneer of modern applied statistics. His 1938 textbook Statistical Methods^[3] became an essential resource: "In the 1970s, a review of citations in published scientific articles from all areas of science showed that Snedecor's Statistical Methods was the most frequently cited book."^[4]

Snedecor worked for the statistics department of Foster's Group (the Australian beer company) from 1957 to 1963. He was involved with the elaboration of all production data.

The "F" of Snedecor's F distribution is named in honor of Sir Ronald Fisher.

Snedecor was awarded honorary doctorates of science by North Carolina State University in 1956 and Iowa State University in 1958.

Snedecor Hall, at Iowa State University, is the home of the Statistics Department. It was constructed in 1939. At Iowa State, he was an early user of John Vincent Atanasoff's Atanasoff–Berry computer (perhaps the first user of an electronic digital computer for real world production mathematics problem solutions).^[5]

Selected publications

• Wallace, H. A.; Snedecor, G. W. (1925), Correlation and machine calculation, Iowa State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts Official Publication, vol. 23, Ames, IA: Iowa State College
• Calculation and interpretation of analysis of variance and covariance, 1934
• Statistical methods applied to experiments in agriculture and biology, 1938
• Snedecor, G. W.; Cochran, W. G. (1967), Statistical methods, Ames, IA: Iowa State University Press

References

1. Unpublished memoir of Emily Alston Estes Snedecor completed in 1931
2. "George Waddel Snedecor - Biography". Maths History. Retrieved 2023-02-11.
3. Snedecor, George W.; Cochran, William G. (1989). Statistical Methods (8th ed.). Ames, Iowa: Blackwell Publishing Professional. ISBN 0-8138-1561-4.
4. Salsburg, David (2001). The Lady Tasting Tea: How Statistics Revolutionized Science in the Twentieth Century. New York: W. H. Freeman. p. 196. ISBN 0-8050-7134-2.
5. Rojas, Raúl (2002). The First Computers: History and Architectures. MIT Press. p. 102. ISBN 0-262-68137-4.

Further reading

• Kempthorne, O. (1974), "George W. Snedecor, 1881-1974", International Statistical Review / Revue Internationale de Statistique, 42 (3): 319–323, JSTOR 1402994
• Cox, G. M.; Homeyer, P. G. (1975), "Professional and personal glimpses of George W. Snedecor", Biometrics, 31 (2): 265–301, doi:10.2307/2529421, JSTOR 2529421
• Carriquiry, A. L.; David, H. A. (2001), "George Waddel Snedecor", in Heyde, C. C.; Seneta, E.; Crepel, P.; Fienberg, S. E.; Gani, J. (eds.), Statisticians of the Centuries, New York, NY: Springer-Verlag, doi:10.1007/978-1-4613-0179-0_75, ISBN 978-0-387-95283-3
• Cox, David F. (2005), "Snedecor, George Waddel", in Armitage, P.; Colton, T. (eds.), Encyclopedia of Biostatistics, Wiley & Sons, doi:10.1002/0470011815.b2a17134, ISBN 047084907X
• Bancroft, T. A.; Brown, S. A., eds. (1972), Statistical papers in honour of George W. Snedecor, Ames, IA: Iowa State University Press, ISBN 0-8138-1585-1
• David, H. A. (1998), "Statistics in U.S. universities in 1933 and the establishment of the Statistical Laboratory at Iowa State", Statistical Science, 13 (1): 66–74, doi:10.1214/ss/1028905974

External links

• George W. Snedecor biography Archived 2016-03-03 at the Wayback Machine
• Article from Amstat News at the Wayback Machine (archived December 20, 2004)
• George W. Snedecor at the Mathematics Genealogy Project