David S. Salsburg gained fame as the author of The Lady Tasting Tea

The Lady Tasting Tea

The Lady Tasting Tea: How Statistics Revolutionized Science in the Twentieth Century is a book by David Salsburg about the history of modern statistics and the role it played in the development of science and industry....

, subtitled How Statistics Revolutionized Science in the Twentieth Century. He is a retired pharmaceutical company statistician (having been a senior research fellow at Pfizer

Pfizer

Pfizer, Inc. is an American multinational pharmaceutical corporation. The company is based in New York City, New York with its research headquarters in Groton, Connecticut, United States...

's central research department) who has taught at Harvard, Connecticut College

Connecticut College

Connecticut College is a private liberal arts college located in New London, Connecticut.The college was founded in 1911, as Connecticut College for Women, in response to Wesleyan University closing its doors to women...

, the University of Connecticut

University of Connecticut

The admission rate to the University of Connecticut is about 50% and has been steadily decreasing, with about 28,000 prospective students applying for admission to the freshman class in recent years. Approximately 40,000 prospective students tour the main campus in Storrs annually...

, the University of Pennsylvania

University of Pennsylvania

The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...

, Rhode Island College

Rhode Island College

Rhode Island College is a nationally ranked, coeducational, state-supported comprehensive college founded in 1854, located in Providence, Rhode Island, USA...

, and Trinity College

Trinity College (Connecticut)

Trinity College is a private, liberal arts college in Hartford, Connecticut. Founded in 1823, it is the second-oldest college in the state of Connecticut after Yale University. The college enrolls 2,300 students and has been coeducational since 1969. Trinity offers 38 majors and 26 minors, and has...

 and has been a member of the American Statistical Association

American Statistical Association

The American Statistical Association , is the main professional US organization for statisticians and related professions. It was founded in Boston, Massachusetts on November 27, 1839, and is the second oldest, continuously operating professional society in the United States...

 since 1964.

In 1994 Salsburg was awarded the Career Achievement Award of the Biostatistics Section of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America

Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America

Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America , founded in 1958, is a trade group representing the pharmaceutical research and biopharmaceutical companies in the United States. PhRMA's stated mission is advocacy for public policies that encourage the discovery of new medicines for patients...

, given annually for "significant contributions to the advancement of biostatistics in the pharmaceutical industry". The Mathematical Association of America

Mathematical Association of America

The Mathematical Association of America is a professional society that focuses on mathematics accessible at the undergraduate level. Members include university, college, and high school teachers; graduate and undergraduate students; pure and applied mathematicians; computer scientists;...

 characterised him as follows

"Salsburg believes that the public is not fully aware of the degree to which recent developments in statistics

Statistics

Statistics is the study of the collection, organization, analysis, and interpretation of data. It deals with all aspects of this, including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of surveys and experiments....

 impact the way we perceive the world. He correctly points out that the twentieth century saw the fading of a deterministic outlook and the rise of a statistical/probabilistic way of looking at the world. This ongoing revolution is not only in the physical sciences, it also touches the social sciences and even the humanities

Humanities

The humanities are academic disciplines that study the human condition, using methods that are primarily analytical, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural sciences....

. Though profound, it is a quiet revolution that has been unnoticed by many."

Dr. Salsburg will be the keynote speaker at the JMP Discovery Summit

JMP (statistical software)

JMP is a computer program that was first developed by John Sall and others to perform simple and complex statistical analyses.It dynamically links statistics with graphics to interactively explore, understand, and visualize data...

in Denver, Sept. 15, 2011.

External links

• Photograph of David Salsburg, from near the bottom of this web page