Statistics’ Scott receives prestigious ASA Founders Award

Statistics’ Scott receives prestigious ASA Founders Award

BY MIKE WILLIAMS
Rice News staff

He may have looked surprised, but Rice Professor David Scott was acting, just a bit, when he received the most prestigious service award a statistician can get.

Scott was presented with the Founders Award for lifetime achievement by the American Statistical Association (ASA) at its meeting in Denver Aug. 5.

“I was told about it a month-and-a-half ago, but they asked me to keep it quiet,” said Scott. “In fact, it was always the only award they wouldn’t preannounce. In the past, they tried to keep the news from the recipients – but they started to be concerned the winners were going to get up on stage in blue jeans and T-shirts.

	DAVID SCOTT

“So the surprise was whether I’d be announced first or second,” he said. “I was second.” 

The Noah Harding Professor of Statistics at Rice, Scott shared the award with Linda Young of the University of Florida, both of whom were honored both for their long leadership roles with the association and for their research.  

Scott’s influence is easy to see. There’s more than a bit of his soul on display when you log onto Travelocity to plan a vacation, and when you use programs like Photoshop to manipulate your snapshots upon your return. Both involve making graphic sense of large data sets – and in the case of Travelocity, perhaps saving you a few bucks in the process. 

“One of the fun things about statistics is the ability to invent algorithms,” he said. “I’ve done a number of these over the years, and I’m probably best-known for the classic histogram, which is a big part of data-mining.” (A sophisticated bar chart, the histogram has endless applications, but one example is what you see when you use Photoshop to check the color levels in an image.) 

Scott also serves as a consultant to Sabre Holdings of Dallas, which owns the Web travel service Travelocity. He said the company is always looking for ways to maximize value for its customers through the mining of data, such as airline ticket prices, that flows through the Internet. 

Often, his services are required by the not-so-average customer. “I spend a fair amount of time doing work for the National Security Agency. But I can’t tell you how it’s used,” he said modestly. 
Scott’s also quite proud of his work at Baylor College of Medicine, where he studied heart disease as part of the late Michael DeBakey’s team, and increasingly finds himself working in environmental analysis. 

“We are fortunate to have a scientist of David Scott’s accomplishments at Rice,” said Rice Provost Eugene Levy. “David’s leadership in developing statistical algorithms important to such diverse areas as national security, health care and the environment has helped make our world smarter and safer.” 

In honoring Scott, the association noted his “remarkable ability to direct and mentor students” as well as his leadership role on projects for the National Science Foundation, the Office of Naval Research, the Department of Agriculture and NASA. He was editor of the Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics for four years and has organized and chaired conferences for the ASA.  

“He has served the discipline in countless ways, frequently quietly behind the scenes,” said Sallie Keller-McNulty, dean of the George R. Brown School of Engineering. “David’s large reputation and the activities he has spearheaded for the discipline of statistics have helped Rice become well-known in statistics, despite its small size.” 

Katherine Ensor, chair of the Department of Statistics at Rice, added that Scott’s work “is the basis for one of the primary research thrusts of our department.” 
Scott earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Rice as well as his doctorate in 1976. He joined the faculty full-time in 1979. He was awarded the Army Wilks Award in 2004 for his application of statistics in the solution of problems for the U.S. Army.