KEITH ORD
Keith Ord was my very supportive colleague in the Dept of Statistics at the University
of Warwick during the 1970s, and one of my co-authors. Please see Chapter 4 of my
academic life story 'The Life of a Bayesian Boy'. Here is an excerpt:
obin Reed, a fellow undergraduate at Imperial College, and a talented probabilist, though never one to take the credit, was instrumental in helping Jeff and I to found the Statistics Department at Warwick. Robin is still there and, after Jeff’s retirement in 2000, he became the longest serving member in the department. I was saddened to see that Jeff’s official history of the department gives Robin and myself an honourable mention (just after the coin tossing) but scarcely acknowledges anybody else.
Jim Smith’s postscript to the official history is more generous but still fails to give more than passing credit to Keith Ord, Tony O’Hagan and Mike West each of whom moved on to high-flying careers at other universities (Penn State, Nottingham, and Duke), or to Sylvia Richardson. I always found the over-riding atmosphere in the department to be rather megalomaniacal, almost like a group psychosis.
Nevertheless, I revelled in Jim’s company when he was a Ph.D. student, I enjoyed played squash with Tony, and I found Keith and his wife, the American statistician Janice Derr, to be extremely hospitable and enjoyed playing scrabble with them. Jim wrote an outstanding thesis on Bayesian Catastrophe Theory and the Kalman Filter, nurtured by Jeff Harrison and under the eagle-eyed gaze of the all-consuming pure mathematician Christopher Zeeman (since elevated to greatness) who put Jim and Jeff in touch with the cusps and manifolds developed by Renée Thom.
See also HISTORY OF THE MATHEMATICS AND STATISTICS DEPARTMENTS
Following an eminent career in the U.S., Keith is currently Professor in the McDonough School of Business at
GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY
Professor Ord’s interests lie in business forecasting and the statistical modeling and analysis of business processes. His research has been published in a number of journals, including: Journal of the American Statistical Association, International Journal of Forecasting, Operations Research, European Journal of Operational Research and Journal of the Operational Research Society. His most recent co-authored books are Forecasting with Exponential Smoothing (2008), and Principles of Business Forecasting (2012). He is also a co-author of Kendall's Advanced Theory of Statistics, a two-volume reference work now in its sixth edition. He recently completed a term as treasurer of the American Statistical Association and is a past president of the group “Making Statistics More Effective in Schools and Business” (MSMESB). He is a fellow of the American Statistical Association, the Royal Statistical Society and the International Institute of Forecasters. He is also an elected member of the International Statistical Institute. He is an associate editor and past editor of the International Journal of Forecasting.
CV
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