Dr. Lynne Billard, university professor in the Department of Statistics at the University of Georgia, will speak Wednesday, March 7, at the next event in the CAM (Center for Applied Mathematics) Colloquium series. Her topic is “The Role of Statistics in Science and Society.”
Free and open to the public, the presentation will begin at 7:30 p.m. in 3M Auditorium, Room 150, Owens Science Hall. Refreshments will be served at 7:10 p.m.
Dr. Lynne Billard
Whether a person’s interests are the social sciences, medical sciences, history, physical sciences, mathematical sciences, and so on, Billard notes that statistics and statisticians have a role to play in helping to daily decipher the information pertaining to those interests. Against the backdrop of a brief historical view of its applications, she will illustrate the role of statistics in a variety of situations, including cases where the obvious technique is not necessarily the best analysis to employ.
Billard received her B.Sc. and Ph.D. from the University of New South Wales, Australia, in 1969. She spent 13 years in administration, including nine years as head of statistics and two years as associate to the dean. She also held academic positions in Australia, Britain, Canada and the United States. She has written for more than 150 publications, mostly in major journals but including six books edited or co-edited, plus a book (2006) on Symbolic Data Analysis (with E. Diday).
Billard has been accorded many honors and awards, including the 1990 ASA Award for Outstanding Statistical Application paper (shared), 1999 ASA Samuel S. Wilks Award (research), 2001 ASA Founders Award (service), and University of Georgia Creative Research Award. She has held numerous professional offices, including president of the International Biometric Society (1994 and 1995) and president of the American Statistical Association (1996).
