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Dedicated to continuing his vision of improving people's lives. He touched those he met, those he taught and those he learned from.

Statistics for Experimenters - Second Edition

George Box, Stuart Hunter and Bill wrote what has become a classic text for experimenters in scientific and business circles, Statistics for Experimenters. More details on the book.

Order your copy of Statistics for Experimenters: Design, Innovation, and Discovery, 2nd Edition by George Box, Stuart Hunter and William G. Hunter, 2005. Updated by George Box and Stu Hunter, this new edition of Statistics for Experimenters adopts the same approaches as the landmark First Edition by teaching with examples, readily understood graphics, and the appropriate use of computers.

Find out about the Annual Hunter Conference on Quality, run by The Madison Area Quality Improvement Network (MAQIN).

Bill founded the ASQC Statistics division. The division presents the Hunter Award to recognize accomplishments in the development and creative application of statistics in problem solving. Previous award recipients include: Bill Hill, Ronald Snee, Brian Joiner and Roger Hoerl.

Read: Doing More With Less in the Public Sector: A Progress Report from Madison, Wisconsin by William G. Hunter, Jan O'Neill, and Carol Wallen, June 1986 (new quality improvement ideas can help public officials combat the effects of decreasing budgets just as they help private businesses increase productivity) and Quality in the Community: One City's Experience, by George Box, Laurel W. Joiner, Sue Rohan and F. Joseph Sensenbrenner, June 1989. The reports highlight the early evolution of the Quality movement in Madison, Wisconsin and the role of the Madison Area Quality Improvement Network.

George Box and Bill co-founded the Center for Quality and Productivity Improvement at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1984. The Center develops, advances and communicates quality improvement methods and ideas. Center report #100 by George Box: William G. Hunter: An Innovator and Catalyst for Quality Improvement

Bill was a leader in the effort to adopt the Deming system of Profound Knowledge and related ideas in the Public Sector (He contributed pages 245-7 to Deming's Out of the Crisis; relating how the City of Madison applied Deming's ideas to a public sector organization). The Public Sector Network grew from his, and others, efforts.

Statistical Design of Experiments Project to teach high school students. Bill's connection: In 1984, Bill Hunter was a principal organizer and speaker at the Woodrow Wilson Foundation summer institute on Quantitative Literacy in Princeton, NJ. There he taught the teachers about DOE and the Statistical Design and Analysis of Experiments.

In 1959 he graduated from Princeton University. Next, he attended the University of Illinois for a year before enrolling as the first doctoral student in statistics at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. For the following 20 years he taught at the University of Wisconsin - Madison Statistics Department and elsewhere (Statistics sites on the WWW).

 

Selected Articles by William G. Hunter

• Managing Our Way to Economic Success: Two Untapped Resources, February 1986. American organizations could compete much better at home and abroad if they would learn to tap the potential information inherent in all processes and the creativity inherent in all employees.
• "Building a Quality Movement," with E. Chacko, August, 1972, Quality Progress.
• "101 Ways to Design an Experiment, or Some Ideas About Teaching Design of Experiments, " 1975, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
• The Next 25 Years in Statistics, by William J. Hill and William G. Hunter (with contributions by Joseph W. Duncan, A. Blanton Godfrey, Brian L. Joiner, Gary C. McDonald, Charles G. Pfeifer, Donald W. Marquardt, and Ronald D. Snee), February 1986. A transformation of the American style of management has already begun; in order for it to succeed, statisticians must assume a leadership role. Publication(s): Chance, 1990, No. 1, pp. 38-39.
• "Statistics, Science, Law and the Environment," 1983, The American Statistician.
• Studies in Quality Improvement: Designing Environmental Regulations, by Soren Bisgaard and William G. Hunter, February 1986. There is a surprising similarity between what SPC provides for industries and the need for constructing sensitive, reliable standards for environmental regulations. Publication(s): US EPA-230-03-047 publication, Paul I. Feder (ed.), Washington, DC, (1987), pp. 41-53.
• A Useful Method for Model-Building II: Synthesizing Response Functions from Individual Components, by William G. Hunter and Andrzej P. Jaworski, February 1986. Analyzing which components of a response are due to each factor is an alternative way to find the best model for studying the properties of a product or process (and thus for improving both). Publication(s): Technometrics, 1986, Vol. 28, No. 4, November (1986), pp. 321-327.
• Doing More With Less in the Public Sector: A Progress Report from Madison, Wisconsin by William G. Hunter, Jan O'Neill, and Carol Wallen, June 1986.
• "Enthalpy-Entropy Compensation Effect: a Statistical Interpretation," 1976, Nature.
• "A Review of Experiments to Increase Research Efficiency: a Literature Survey" with W. Hill, 1966, Technometrics.
• "A Useful Method for Model-Building," with G.E.P. Box, 1962, Technometrics.

To order articles from the American Statistician or Technometrics call the American Statistical Association at (703) 684-1221 ext. 123.

More articles, by him, and documents available via the WWW which reference his work.

George Box and Bill Hunter on Videotape:

Tape 4061: "Practice and Theory; Some Personal Experiences," George Box and Bill Hunter (1982), 43 minutes. From the American Statistical Association Distinguished Lecture Series

The Picture Gallery has pictures of Bill and his family.
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