Ingram Olkin

Ingram Olkin
Ingram Olkin in 1986
Born	(1924-07-23)July 23, 1924 Waterbury, Connecticut, U.S.
Died	April 28, 2016(2016-04-28) (aged 91) Palo Alto, California, U.S.
Nationality	American
Fields	Statistics
Institutions	Stanford University
Alma mater	University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Columbia University City College of New York
Doctoral advisor	S. N. Roy
Doctoral students	Leon Gleser Larry V. Hedges

Ingram Olkin (July 23, 1924 – April 28, 2016) was a professor emeritus and chair of statistics and education at Stanford University and the Stanford Graduate School of Education. He is known for developing statistical analysis for evaluating policies, particularly in education, and for his contributions to meta-analysis, statistics education, multivariate analysis, and majorization theory.

Biography

Olkin was born in 1924 in Waterbury, Connecticut.^[1] He received a B.S. in mathematics at the City College of New York, an M.A. from Columbia University, and his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina. Olkin also studied with Harold Hotelling. Olkin's advisor was S. N. Roy and his Ph.D. thesis was "On distribution problems in multivariate analysis" submitted in 1951.

Olkin died from complications of colorectal cancer at his home in Palo Alto, California on April 28, 2016, aged 91.^[2]

A spokesperson for the statistics profession: Honors and awards

Olkin was awarded the first Elizabeth Scott Award from the American Statistical Association for his achievements in supporting women in statistics.

In 1962 he was elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association.^[3] In 1984, he was President of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics. Olkin is a Guggenheim, Fulbright, and Lady Davis Fellow, with an honorary doctorate from De Montfort University.

Publications and editing

Olkin has written many books including Statistical methods for meta-analysis, Probability theory, and Education in a Research University. Olkin's coauthors include S. S. Shrikhande and Larry V. Hedges. Olkin has written two books with Albert W. Marshall, Inequalities: Theory of Majorization and its Applications (1979) and Life distributions: Structure of nonparametric, semiparametric, and parametric families (2007). In nonparametric statistics and decision theory, Olkin wrote Selecting and ordering populations: A new statistical methodology with Jean Dickinson Gibbons and Milton Sobel (1977, 1999).

Ingram was Editor of the Annals of Mathematical Statistics and served as the first editor of the Annals of Statistics, both published by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics. He was a primary force in the founding of the Journal of Educational Statistics, which is published with the American Statistical Association. Olkin was also an editor with the mathematics journal, Linear Algebra and its Applications, and has been active in supporting a series of international conferences on matrix theory, linear algebra, and statistics.

Bibliography

• Golbeck, Amanda L.; Olkin, Ingram; Gel, Yulia R., eds. (2015). Leadership and Women in Statistics. Chapman & Hall/CRC Press. ISBN 978-1482236446. 
• Hedges, Larry V.; Olkin, Ingram (1985). Statistical methods for meta-analysis. Boston: Academic Press. ISBN 0-12-336380-2. 
• Inequalities: Theory of Majorization and Its Applications (2011) Albert W. Marshall, Ingram Olkin, Barry Arnold, Springer, ISBN 978-0-387-40087-7
• Inequalities: Theory of Majorization and Its Applications (1979) Albert W. Marshall, Ingram Olkin, Academic Press, ISBN 978-0-12-473750-1
• "A Guide to Probability Theory and Application" (1973), with L. Gleser and C. Derman, Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
• "Probability Models and Application" (1994), with L. Gleser and C. Derman, Prentice Hall.
• A tribute to Marshall and Olkin's book "Inequalities: Theory of Majorization and its Applications"

References

• Ingram from Stanford University
• Ingram Olkin at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
• Ingram Olkin