The Statistical Computing and Graphics Award

The Statistical Computing and Graphics Award of the ASA Sections of Statistical Computing and Statistical Graphics recognizes an individual or team for innovation in computing, software, or graphics that has had a significant impact on statistical practice or research. The prize carries with it a cash award of $5,000 plus an allowance of up to $1,000 for travel to the next Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM) where the award will be presented.

Qualifications

The prize-winning contribution will have had significant and lasting impacts on statistical computing, software or graphics.

The Awards Committee depends on the American Statistical Association membership to submit nominations. Committee members will review the nominations and make the final determination of who, if any, should receive the award. The award may not be given to a sitting member of the Awards Committee or a sitting member of the Executive Committee of the Section of Statistical Computing or the Section of Statistical Graphics.

Nomination and Award Dates

Nominations are due by May 31 in even numbered year.  The first award was given in 2010, and subsequent awards are made at most bi-annually according to the discretion of the Awards Committee.

Nominations should be submitted as a complete packet, consisting of:

  • a nomination letter, no longer than four pages, addressing points in the selection criteria, please include a draft citation for news releases to be used if selected
  • nominee’s curriculum vita(e)
  • a minimum of 3 (and no more than 4) supporting letters, each no longer than two pages

Selection Process

The Awards Committee will consist of the Chairs and Past Chairs of the Sections on Statistical Computing and Statistical Graphics. The selection process will be handled by the Awards Chair of the Statistical Computing Section and the Statistical Graphics Section. Nominations and questions can be sent to the Awards Chair.   Non-winning nominees can be retained as nominees in subsequent years if the nominators agree.

Winners

2023

The Joint Statistical Computing and Statistical Graphics Sections of the American Statistical Association (ASA) are pleased to announce that the 2023 ASA Statistical Computing and Graphics Award goes to Dr. Douglas Bates:

"For his fundamental contributions to statistical computing infrastructure, developments of S, R, Julia, and mixed-effects models, and their applications in statistical research and practice."

Dr. Bates is currently an Emeritus Professor in the Department of Statistics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He received his Ph.D. in Statistics from Queen's University at Kingston in 1978. After being on the faculty of Mathematics at University of Alberta, he joined the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1980, where he chaired the Department from 1991 to 1994. Throughout his career, he has published two books and over 40 papers. He has served on the editorial board of the SIAM Journal of Scientific and Statistical Computing (1983-1984), The American Statistican (1989), the Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics (1990-1993), and the Current Index to Statistics (1998-2003). He became a Fellow of the American Statistical Association in 1992. Dr. Bates has contributed significantly to the development of S and R languages since early days. He is a founding member of the R Development Core Team. Besides, he is well known for his impressive contribution to the development and implementation of mixed-effects models. He is one of the major developers of the three widely used packages for mixed-effects models: "nlme" (for S and R), "lme4" (for R) and "MixedModels" (for Julia).

The ASA Statistical Computing and Graphics Award is the most prestigious award bestowed by the Section on Statistical Computing and the Section on Statistical Graphics. It recognizes an individual or team for innovation in computing, software, or graphics that has had a significant impact on statistical practice or research. The past awardees are Howard Wainer (2021), Luke Tierney (2019), Bill Cleveland (2016), and Robert Gentleman and Ross Ihaka (2010).

The award committee consisted of the past and present chairs of the Section on Statistical Computing (Usha Govindarajulu and Jun Yan) and the Section on Statistical Graphics (Simon Urbanek and Ed Mulrow).

The award will be presented at the two Sections' mixer at the 2023 Joint Statistical Meeting (JSM). An invited session honoring Dr. Douglas Bates, organized by Dr. Yazhen Wang, is reserved for the 2023 JSM.

2021

The Joint Statistical Computing and Statistical Graphics Sections of the American Statistical Association (ASA) are pleased to announce that the 2021 ASA Statistical Computing and Graphics Award goes to Dr. Howard Wainer:

For half a century of dedicated, influential promotion of the role of graphics, computing and statistical thinking in scientific discovery and communication and for inspiring others to elevate their data visualization craft to an art form by being a generous and engaging teacher, mentor, collaborator, and author.

Dr. Wainer was a Distinguished Research Scientist for the National Board of Medical Examiners and an Adjunct Professor of Statistics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania prior to his retirement in 2016.. He received his Ph.D. in Psychometrics from Princeton University in 1968. After being on the faculty of Psychology at the Temple University and the University of Chicago, and a period at the Bureau of Social Science Research, he was Senior and Principal Research Scientist at the Division of Statistical and Psychological Research Serivices, Educational Testing Service, for 21 years before joining the National Board of Medical Examiners. He has a long-standing interest in the use and practice of statistical graphics in scientific inquiries, published nearly two dozen books on graphics and statistical thinking, and contributed to the development of graphical methods and software. He has been writing a column on data visualization for the statistics magazine Chance since 1990. Dr. Wainer is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association and a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association. (See http://www.statlit.org/Wainer.htm for further details.)

The award committee consisted of the past and present chairs of the Section on Statistical Computing (Wendy Martinez and John Castelloe) and the Section on Statistical Graphics (Di Cook and Isabella Ghement).

The award will be presented at the two Sections' mixer at the 2021 Joint Statistical Meeting (JSM). An invited session honoring Dr. Howard Wainer, organized by Dr. David Hoaglin, is reserved for the 2021 JSM.

2019

We are pleased to announce that the Statistical Computing and Graphics Award committee has chosen Luke Tierney of the University of Iowa as the recipient of the 2019 Statistical Computing and Graphics Award, in recognition of his enormously influential creation of XLisp-Stat, substantial work on MCMC methods, and critical contributions to R.

Luke Tierney, Fellow of the ASA and Fellow of the IMS, is the Ralph E. Wareham Professor of Mathematical Sciences in the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science, University of Iowa. He received his PhD in Operations Research from Cornell in 1980. After being on the faculty of Statistics at Carnegie-Mellon University and then at the University of Minnesota, he joined the University of Iowa in 2002, where he chaired the Department from 2004 to 2014. He served as editor of the Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics from 2004 to 2006.

Luke single-handedly built XLisp-Stat, an interactive statistical computing environment on top of the XLisp language, with many advanced features that influenced later statistical software. The newer generation of statisticians and data scientists have benefited from his fundamental contributions to R in areas such as memory management, namespacing, byte-code compiling, parallel computing, and, more recently, alternative representation for R objects. Many of these contributions are critically important yet least known to the general users. His quiet contributions have enabled a generation of data analysts to do their work through the global open source data analysis system R, which bridges statistics and data science.

The Awards Committee consists of the past and present Chair of the Section on Statistical Computing (Catherine Calder and Juergen Symanzik) and the Section on Statistical Graphics (Michael Friendly and Jay Emerson). Many thanks for their time and work!

2016


We are pleased to announce that the Statistical Computing and Graphics Award committee has chosen Bill Cleveland of Purdue University, in recognition for his substantial contributions to Statistical Computing and Graphics, which have transformed the way statisticians work with data.

This year's judges were David van Dyk, Naomi Robbins, Michael Minnotte, and Hadley Wickham. Many thanks for their time and work!

2010

We are pleased to announce that the Statistical Computing and Graphics Award committee has chosen Robert Gentleman of Genentech and Ross Ihaka of University of Auckland jointly as the first bi-annual Statistical Computing and Graphics Award recipients, in recognition for their work in initiating the R Project for Statistical Computing.

This year's judges were Jose' Pinheiro, Antony Unwin, Luke Tierney and Simon Urbanek. Many thanks for their time and work!