William S. Cleveland

Last updated
William S. Cleveland
Born1943 (age 82–83)
CitizenshipAmerican
Alma mater
Known for
Scientific career
Fields
Institutions
Thesis Time series projections, theory and practice  (1969)
Doctoral advisor Leonard Jimmie Savage

William Swain Cleveland II (born 1943) is an American computer scientist and retired professor of statistics and retired professor of computer science at Purdue University, known for his work on data visualization, particularly on nonparametric regression [1] and local regression. [2] He is one of the developers of the S programming language. [3]

Contents

Biography

Cleveland obtained his AB in Mathematics mid 1960s from Princeton University, where he graduated under William Feller. For his PhD studies in statistics he moved to Yale University, where he graduated in 1969 under Leonard Jimmie Savage. [4] [5]

After graduation Cleveland started at Bell Labs, where he was staff member of the Statistics Research Department and department head for 12 years. While at Bell Labs, he helped to develop the S programming language, a precursor to R. [3] Eventually he moved to the Purdue University, where he became Professor of Statistics and Courtesy Professor of Computer Science.

His research interests are in the fields of "data visualization, computer networking, machine learning, data mining, time series, statistical modeling, visual perception, environmental science, and seasonal adjustment." [6] Cleveland is credited with defining and naming the field of data science, which he did in a 2001 publication. [7]

Cleveland retired in 2025. [8]

Honors and awards

Cleveland received the Wilcoxon Award from Technometrics in 1975 and 1977. He received the Youden Prize from Technometrics in 1987 along with Richard A. Becker at Bell Labs for their paper Brushing scatterplots. [9]

In 1982 he was elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association. [10]

He was named the National Statistician of the Year, Chicago chapter of the American Statistical Association in 1996. In 2016, Cleveland received the Lifetime Achievement Award in Graphics and Computing from the American Statistical Association, and the Parzen Prize for Statistical Innovation from Texas A&M University. In 2021, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by Hasselt University. [11]

Bibliography

Books

Selected publications

References

  1. ↑ Armitage, Peter, Geoffrey Berry, and John NS Matthews. Statistical methods in medical research. John Wiley & Sons, 2008.
  2. ↑ Venables, William N., and Brian D. Ripley. Modern applied statistics with S. Springer Science & Business Media, 2002.
  3. 1 2 Berry, Kenneth J.; Johnston, Janis E.; Jr, Paul W. Mielke (2014-04-11). A Chronicle of Permutation Statistical Methods: 1920–2000, and Beyond. Springer Science & Business Media. p. 207. ISBN   978-3-319-02744-9.
  4. ↑ William S. Cleveland, CV Archived 2015-09-24 at the Wayback Machine , at stat.purdue.edu. Accessed 10-04-2015.
  5. ↑ "William Swain Cleveland, II". The Mathematics Genealogy Project. Retrieved 2 July 2022.
  6. ↑ William S. Cleveland: Bio Archived 2015-07-09 at the Wayback Machine , at stat.purdue.edu. Accessed 10-04-2015.
  7. ↑ Brady, Henry E. (2019-05-11). "The Challenge of Big Data and Data Science". Annual Review of Political Science. 22 (1): 297–323. doi: 10.1146/annurev-polisci-090216-023229 . ISSN   1094-2939.
  8. ↑ "Retiree Recognition - Human Resources - Purdue University". www.purdue.edu. Retrieved 2025-11-11.
  9. ↑ "Back Matter". Technometrics. 50 (1). 2008. ISSN   0040-1706. JSTOR   25471450.
  10. ↑ View/Search Fellows of the ASA Archived 2016-06-16 at the Wayback Machine , accessed 2016-10-15.
  11. ↑ "William S. Cleveland Receives Honorary Doctorate from Hasselt University - Department of Statistics - Purdue University". www.stat.purdue.edu.
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