- Frank Wilcoxon
Frank Wilcoxon (1892–1965) was a
chemist andstatistician , known for the development of statistical tests.Frank Wilcoxon was born to American parents on
2 September 1892 inCounty Cork ,Ireland Bradley, R.A. (1966) "Obituary: Frank Wilcoxon." Biometrics 22(1): 192–194] . He grew up in Catskill, New York but received part of his education inEngland . In 1917 he graduated fromPennsylvania Military College with a B.Sc.. After theFirst World War he entered graduate studies, first atRutgers University , where he was awarded an M.S. inchemistry in 1921, and then atCornell University , gaining aPh.D. inphysical chemistry in 1924.Wilcoxon entered a research career, working at the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research from 1925 to 1941. He then moved to the Atlas Powder Company, where he designed and directed the Control Laboratory, before joining the American Cyanamid Company in 1943. During this time he developed an interest in inferential statistics through the study of R.A. Fisher's 1925 text, "
Statistical Methods for Research Workers ". He retired in 1957.Over his career Wilcoxon published over 70 papersKaras, J. & Savage, I.R. (1967) "Publications of Frank Wilcoxon (1892–1965)." Biometrics 23(1): 1–10] , but the paper for which he is remembered is a 1945 paperWilcoxon, F. (1945) "Individual Comparisons by Ranking Methods." Biometrics Bulletin 1: 80–83.] containing the two new statistical tests that still bear his name, the Wilcoxon rank-sum test and the
Wilcoxon signed-rank test . These arenon-parametric alternatives to the unpaired and pairedStudent's t-test s respectively. He died on18 November 1965 after a brief illness.References
External links
*Brookes, E. Bruce (2001) [http://www.umass.edu/wsp/statistics/tales/wilcoxon.html Tales of Statisticians: Frank Wilcoxon.] In "Acquiring Statistics:Techniques and Concepts for Historians." (accessed 26 November 2005)
*Portraits of Statisticians [http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/maths/histstat/people/wilcoxon.gifFrank Wilcoxon]
*Florida State University [http://stat.fsu.edu/brochure/stat/brochure99.htm Frank Wilcoxon]
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