George Alfred Barnard

George A. Barnard
George A. Barnard
Born	23 September 1915; Walthamstow, London, England
Died	30 July 2002 (aged 86); Brightlingsea, Essex, England
Citizenship	United Kingdom
Education	University of Cambridge; Princeton University
	Scientific career
Fields	Statistics
Institutions	Imperial College London; University of Essex; University of Waterloo
Doctoral advisor	Alonzo Church
Doctoral students	Dennis Lindley; K. D. Tocher; Vidyadhar P. Godambe

George Alfred Barnard (23 September 1915 – 30 July 2002) was a British statistician known particularly for his work on the foundations of statistics and on quality control.^[1]

Early life and education[edit]

George Barnard was born in Walthamstow, London. His father was a cabinet maker and his mother had been a domestic servant. His sister Dorothy Wedderburn became a sociologist and eventually Principal of Royal Holloway, University of London. Barnard attended the local grammar school, the Monoux School, and from there he won a scholarship to St John's College, Cambridge, to read mathematics. In 1937 he went on to Princeton University to do graduate work on mathematical logic with Alonzo Church.

Career[edit]

Barnard was on holiday in Britain when the Second World War started and he never went back to Princeton to finish his PhD. The war made Barnard into a statistician as it did for many mathematicians of his generation. In 1940 he joined an engineering firm, Plessey, as a mathematical consultant. In 1942 he moved to the Ministry of Supply to apply quality control and sampling methods to the products for which they were responsible. It was there that Barnard began doing statistics. The group he was put in charge of included Peter Armitage, Dennis Lindley and Robin Plackett. Lindley recalls that they were like students working for a doctorate with Barnard as supervisor. Abraham Wald was in a similar group in the United States. Both groups developed sequential methods of sampling.

At the end of the war, Barnard went to Imperial College London, as a lecturer, becoming a reader in 1948 and professor of mathematical statistics in 1954. In 1961 he was elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association.^[2] In 1966 he moved to the newly created University of Essex, from which he retired in 1975. Barnard, however, kept on doing statistics until he died aged 86. Until 1981 he spent much of each year at the University of Waterloo, Canada, and after that he continued writing papers and corresponding with colleagues all over the world.

Barnard's best known contribution is probably his 1962 paper on likelihood inference but the paper he thought his best was the 1949 paper in which he first espoused the likelihood principle. He had originally described the principle in the context of optional stopping. A statement by Leonard Savage brings out how surprising the principle first seemed:

I learned the stopping rule principle from Professor Barnard in ... 1952. Frankly, I then thought it a scandal that anyone in the profession could advance an idea so patently wrong, even as today I can scarcely believe that some people resist an idea so patently right.^[3]

Political activism[edit]

In an interview Barnard recalled, "my main interest above everything was politics from about 1933 until 1956. Well, that’s not true – until the end of the war it would be fair to say." At school he proposed the motion to the school debating society that "Socialism is preferable to Capitalism." He joined the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1933 and took part in anti-fascist marches in the east end of London. The historian Eric Hobsbawm, a fellow communist at Cambridge, recalled him as a "lean-and-hungry-looking mathematician from a working class family" who served as the "student Party's chief local commissar."^[4] At Plessey he was chairman of the shop stewards.

Awards[edit]

Barnard served terms as president of three societies: Operational Research Society in 1962–1964, the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications in 1970–1971, and the Royal Statistical Society in 1971–1972. He was awarded the Guy Medal in Gold by the Royal Statistical Society in 1975.

In May 1986, Barnard was awarded an honorary degree by the Open University as Doctor of the university, and in 1994 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Essex.

Personal life[edit]

He married first, Helen J.B. Davis in 1942 and they had three sons. He married second, Mary M.L. Jones in 1949 and they had one son.^[5] He was a Distinguished Supporter of the British Humanist Association.

Barnard died at his home in Essex in August 2002. Dennis Lindley, writing in The Statistician, remarked that "We have lost a great statistician and a delightful human being."

Publications[edit]

Barnard, G.A. (1945). "A new test for 2×2 tables". Nature. 156 (3954): 177 & 783. Bibcode:1945Natur.156..177B. doi:10.1038/156177a0. S2CID 186244479.
Barnard, G.A. (1946). "Sequential tests in industrial statistics". Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Supplement. 8: 1–26.
Barnard, G.A. (1949). "Statistical Inference". Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. B. 11 (2): 115–149. JSTOR 2984075.
Barnard, G.A. (195). "Control charts and stochastic processes". Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. B. B (21): 239–271.
Barnard, G.A.; Jenkins, G.M.; Winsten, C.B. (1962). "Likelihood Inference and Time Series". Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. A. 125 (3): 321–372. doi:10.2307/2982406. JSTOR 2982406.
Geisser, Seymour; et al., eds. (1990). Bayesian and Likelihood Methods in Statistics and Econometrics: Essays in honor of George A. Barnard. North-Holland. – This contains a review of Barnard's work by Lindley. The volume was one of a series honouring Bayesian heroes. There is a bibliography (citing 109 articles) up to 1989.

In 1990 he made a book out of manuscripts left by his friend Egon Pearson:

Pearson, E. S. (1990). Plackett, R.L.; Barnard, G.A. (eds.). 'Student', a statistical biography of William Sealy Gosset. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

After 1990 Barnard published little, although he kept up his letter writing. In 1996 however he produced a review of Barndorff-Nielsen and Cox after observing that, "A great virtue of the book is that it raises perhaps as many questions as it answers," Barnard went on to give his answer to one of those questions:

Cox, D.R. (1996). "Review of Inference and Asymptotics by O.E. Barndorff-Nielsen". Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. A. 159: 178–179.

References[edit]

^ Dennis Lindley (9 August 2002). "George Barnard". The Guardian. Retrieved 12 November 2023.
^ "Fellows of the ASA". American Statistical Association. Retrieved 23 July 2016.
^ Savage, Leonard Jimmie (1961). Foundations of Statistical Inference. p. 75.
^ Hobsbawm, Eric (2002). Interesting Times: a Twentieth-Century Life. p. 116.
^ "Barnard, Prof. George Alfred". Who Was Who (online ed.). A & C Black, 1920–2008; Oxford University Press. December 2007. Retrieved 11 November 2012.

External links[edit]

Lindley, D.V. (2003). "Professor George A. Barnard (1915–2002)". The Statistician. 52 (2): 231–234. doi:10.1111/1467-9884.00355_1.

de Groot, M.H. (1988). "A Conversation with George A. Barnard". Obituary. Statistical Science. 3 (2): 196–212. doi:10.1214/ss/1177012905. JSTOR 2245568.

George Alfred Barnard at the Mathematics Genealogy Project

Lindley. "Obituary" (PDF). Obituary. IMS Bulletin: 8. Archived from the original (PDF) on 11 December 2005. – Briefer obituary

"portrait of George Alfred Barnard". on the page "Portraits of Statisticians". Mathematics. York U.

Bennett, J.H. (ed.). "Statistical Inference and Analysis, selected correspondence of R.A. Fisher". Archived from the original on 20 November 2005. – Barnard's correspondence with Fisher

"School Debate". 1932. Archived from the original on 24 October 2005. – Barnard the school debater

"A Conversation with V.P. Godambe". – Barnard the PhD supervisor

"London Review of Books". 29 July 1999. – Barnard the letter writer

[1] Dennis Lindley (9 August 2002). "George Barnard". The Guardian. Retrieved 12 November 2023.

[2] "Fellows of the ASA". American Statistical Association. Retrieved 23 July 2016.

[3] Savage, Leonard Jimmie (1961). Foundations of Statistical Inference. p. 75.

[4] Hobsbawm, Eric (2002). Interesting Times: a Twentieth-Century Life. p. 116.

[WWW-5] "Barnard, Prof. George Alfred". Who Was Who (online ed.). A & C Black, 1920–2008; Oxford University Press. December 2007. Retrieved 11 November 2012.

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v t e Presidents of the Royal Statistical Society
19th century	1834–1836 The Marquess of Lansdowne 1836–1838 Sir Charles Lemon, Bt 1838–1840 The Earl FitzWilliam 1840–1842 Viscount Sandon 1842–1843 The Marquess of Lansdowne 1843–1845 Lord Ashley 1845–1847 The Lord Monteagle of Brandon 1847–1849 The Earl FitzWilliam 1849–1851 The Earl of Harrowby 1851–1853 The Lord Overstone 1853–1855 The Earl FitzWilliam 1855–1857 The Earl of Harrowby 1857–1859 Lord Stanley 1859–1861 Lord John Russell 1861–1863 Sir John Pakington, Bt 1863–1865 William Henry Sykes 1865–1867 The Lord Houghton 1867–1869 William Ewart Gladstone 1869–1871 William Newmarch 1871–1873 William Farr 1873–1875 William Guy 1875–1877 James Heywood 1877–1879 George Shaw-Lefevre 1879–1880 Thomas Brassey 1880–1882 James Caird 1882–1884 Robert Giffen 1884–1886 Rawson W. Rawson 1886–1888 George Goschen 1888–1890 Thomas Graham Balfour 1890–1892 Frederic J. Mouat 1892–1894 Charles Booth 1894–1896 The Lord Farrer 1896–1897 John Biddulph Martin 1897 Alfred Edmund Bateman 1897–1899 Leonard Courtney 1899–1900 Henry Fowler 1900–1902 The Lord Avebury
20th century	1902–1904 Patrick George Craigie 1904–1905 Sir Francis Powell, Bt 1905–1906 The Earl of Onslow 1906–1907 Richard Martin 1907–1909 Sir Charles Dilke, Bt 1909–1910 Jervoise Athelstane Baines 1910–1912 Lord George Hamilton 1912–1914 Francis Ysidro Edgeworth 1914–1915 The Lord Welby 1915–1916 Lord George Hamilton 1916–1918 Bernard Mallet, Registrar General 1918–1920 Herbert Samuel 1920–1922 R. Henry Rew 1922–1924 The Lord Emmott 1924–1926 Udny Yule 1926–1928 The Viscount D'Abernon 1928–1930 A. William Flux 1930–1932 Sir Josiah Stamp 1932–1934 The Lord Meston 1934–1936 Major Greenwood 1936–1938 The Lord Kennet 1938–1940 Arthur Lyon Bowley 1940–1941 Henry William Macrosty 1941 Hector Leak 1941–1943 William Beveridge 1943–1945 Ernest Charles Snow 1945–1947 The Lord Woolton 1947–1949 David Heron 1949–1950 Sir Geoffrey Heyworth 1950–1952 Austin Bradford Hill 1952–1954 Ronald Fisher 1954–1955 The Lord Piercy 1955–1957 Egon Pearson 1957–1959 Harry Campion 1959–1960 Hugh Beaver 1960–1962 Maurice Kendall 1962–1964 Joseph Oscar Irwin 1964–1965 Sir Paul Chambers 1965–1966 L. H. C. Tippett 1966–1967 M. S. Bartlett 1967–1968 Frank Yates 1968–1969 Arthur Cockfield 1969–1970 R. G. D. Allen 1970–1971 Bernard Benjamin 1971–1972 George Alfred Barnard 1972–1973 Harold Wilson 1973–1974 D. J. Finney 1974–1975 Henry Daniels 1975–1977 Stella Cunliffe 1977–1978 Henry Wynn 1978–1980 Sir Claus Moser 1980–1982 David Cox 1982–1984 Peter Armitage 1984–1985 Walter Bodmer 1985–1986 John Nelder 1986–1987 James Durbin 1987–1989 John Kingman 1989–1991 Peter G. Moore 1991–1993 T. M. F. Smith 1993–1995 D. J. Bartholomew 1995–1997 Adrian Smith 1997–1999 Robert Nicholas Curnow 1999–2001 Denise Lievesley
21st century	2001–2003 Peter Green 2003–2005 Andy Grieve 2005–2007 Tim Holt 2008–2009 David Hand 2010–2010 Bernard Silverman (resigned Feb 2010; replaced pro tem by David Hand) 2011–2012 Valerie Isham 2013–2014 John Pullinger 2014–2016 Peter Diggle 2017–2018 David Spiegelhalter 2019– Deborah Ashby
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