Mathematician John Wilder Tukey grew in an academic background where both parents were teachers. John’s birthday is on 26 July, born in 1915 in New Bedford, Mass. John deceased at Princeton, New Jersey, on 26 July 2000. Furthermore, John’s parents intended to leave New Bedford when Tukey was born, but they chose to relocate when he was five years old. Thus, Tukey had a unique training before coming to college. However, John’s mother was frightened and worried that Wilder was sluggish to go to school; thus, Tukey’s Mother strongly decided that John Should study at home. Later Wilder married in 1950, and his wife Elizabeth Louise Rapp died in 1998. Unfortunately, Tukey and his wife had no children. However, Tukey became an admirable icon in the world of mathematic and statistics because John contributed and helped in the area of statistics.
Tukey graduated from Brown University in 1936 and earned an MA in Chemical in 1937. Moreover, before graduating from Brown University, Tukey transferred to Princeton University, where he received a Ph.D. in Mathematics. History dictates that Tukey operated at the fire control office alongside Wilks and Cochran during the Second World War. Admirably, in times of conflict, he helped project the U-2 espionage airplane. After the warfare, he traveled to Princeton to share his time amid AT&T and the campus. In 1962, the American Philosophical Society elected Tukey to be one of the president’s science advisory committees (Adams, 2019). He chaired several important committees dealing with the environment, education, chemicals, and health. In 1945, he became a professor of statistics at Princeton and the founding director of Princeton.
Furthermore, Wilder was an inspiration to civil society and statisticians. Tukey participated in an agency of the American Arithmetical Connotation that published a study disapproving the statistical technique of the Kinsey account. It was a Statistical difficulty of the Kinsey Story on Voluptuous conduct in the human masculine. Between 1960 and 1980, Tukey assisted in creating the NBC TV system ballots used to forecast and evaluate ballot votes. Tukey was similarly an Education Testing Service consultant for Xerox Company and Merck & Company (Jebb et al., 2017). Additionally, James Cooley became famous because of Wilder’s work in the Cooley–Tukey FFT method. Therefore, John’s work has inspired and transformed both people and society.
Research shows that Tukey contributed to the statistical technique of analyzing exploratory data and developed statistical methodologies used in descriptive data. Thus, Wilder’s method helps to separate experimental data in solving statistical problems. Moreover, Tukey coined numerous statistical words often, but the two informatics were the most renowned coinages he received (Giannini & Bowen, 2017). For example, Tukey conceived the word “bit” to contract a “binary digit” while working with Von Neumann on primary computer ideas. In a paper by Claude Shannon in 1948, the term “bit” was first used.
In my opinion, John Wilder Tukey was a highly luminous and ambitious man. In statistics, he provided many necessary inputs both in the education and health science sectors. He had limited time for personal interests, but he seemed to like reading science fiction and mystery novels. In most cases, Wilder did not use scientific knowledge to prove statistics work. He also engaged in several panels on environmental and census concerns. Furthermore, Wilder was an intelligent and creative individual who is difficult to forget. Additionally, he provided the foundation of knowledge on the topics he discovered under science and mathematics education. Tukey also identified areas of prior scholarship to prevent duplication and gave credit to other researchers. He also created the need for additional research (justifying an examination). Furthermore, Tukey identified the relationship of works in the context of its contribution to the topic and other professions. Lastly, he placed his research within the context of existing literature, making a case for why further study is needed.
References
Adams, A. (2019). Designing Penfield: Inside the Montreal Neurological Institute. Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 93(2), 207-240.
Giannini, T., & Bowen, J. P. (2017). Life in code and digits: When Shannon met Turing. Electronic Visualisation and the Arts (EVA 2017), 51-58.
Jebb, A. T., Parrigon, S., & Woo, S. E. (2017). Exploratory data analysis as a foundation of inductive research. Human Resource Management Review, 27(2), 265-276.