The Pro Bono Statistician

Abstract

Because this is a serious evening for me, my preparations started during the year (2004) before my presidency. One of the things I did was to look at all the speeches of the 99 previous presidents?anyway, those available in the Journal of the Amer ican Statistical Association. I found them to be of great value and arranged to have several appear in whole or in part in The American Statistician History Corner that I ran during 2003 2006 (Scheuren 2007b). Because American Statistical Associa tion (ASA) presidents after me?and others?might also find them useful, I put them on a website, which has the simple name www.asapresidentialpapers.info. You can reach that site directly or go through ASA's main website?www.amstat.org. Incidentally, this paper will be added there in 2007. In the course of all that reading (and with some help from others?notably George Cobb, David Banks, and Mary Batcher, who are wiser), I began to think about how, in this speech, I could remind you tonight?as other presidents before me have and, presumably, after me, will?of the many good ideas that have come from earlier eras, but that still pose chal lenges to our profession. During my presidency, I have begun conducting that follow-up. Naturally, my personality led me to add in a little more besides, albeit that was mainly emphasis. Even someone with my energy level, though, cannot do every thing, so I needed a theme. I decided to focus on the phrase in the American Statistical Association (ASA) mission state ment that exhorts us to Use our discipline to enhance human welfare. Not coincidentally, that was one of the areas President Sav age talked about in 1984, in Philadelphia, when he gave his, the 79th, ASA Presidential Speech (Savage 1985). (I was actu ally there. The room was not as well lit as it is this evening and I was a little bit sleepy. But still his words resonated. Let me try to deepen his precedent by giving five examples.)