Award honors beloved mentor
“I’m not very good with numbers,” said Arthur Dempster, professor emeritus of theoretical statistics, pondering what was the founding year of the American Statistical Association. On May 11, generations of students and faculty celebrated the inauguration of the Arthur P. Dempster Award and the 55th anniversary of the Harvard Statistics Department. Of course, the large turnout gave lie to Dempster’s claim: He’s been quite good with numbers, shown by the many who attended. Stephen Blyth, professor of the practice in statistics and managing director at the Harvard Management Co., established the Dempster fund to recognize promising graduate students in the department, especially those working in theoretical and foundational statistics. “I’m happy for the award to support ‘deep thinking’ about uncertainty, broadly defined, rather than simply rote or ‘procedural’ application of statistical machinery,” said Blyth, who hosted the event at the Federal Reserve, where the fund is located. Blyth, who studied under Dempster and received...