John Tukey: Statistical Contributions, Findings, and Applications

This report provides an overview of the statistical contributions of John Tukey. It explores his life, career, and major achievements, including the development of the jackknife technique, box plots, and the FFT algorithm. The report also delves into his work on exploratory data analysis and the impact of his findings on various fields such as digital signal processing, image and speech processing, and data analysis. It highlights the applications of his techniques in areas like population data study, radio and TV stations, aeronautical and marine industries, and research analysis. The report also mentions his contributions to computer science, such as the term 'bit' and the concept of software. The report is a comprehensive exploration of Tukey's lasting legacy in the field of statistics and its practical applications.

JONH WILDER TUKEY
STACTICIAN

Personal Information
John Tukey was born in New Bedford
Massachusetts in 1915.
He was a professor of statistics at Princeton
University at the age of 35 years
 He was the founding chairperson of Princeton
department in 1965
He was privately tutored by his mother at home.
He obtain his Bachelors degree in 1936 and his
M.sc in 1937
He retired in 1985 and died in July 26 2000.

Contributions
He contributed to what is famously known as
jackknife procedure or also known as jackknife
estimation.
He also introduced the box plot in his book known
as ‘Exploration data analysis’.
He is also known for contributing to various
statistical practices and enunciated the significant
distinction between exploratory data analysis and
confirmatory data analysis(Haig 2015)
Together with James Cooley, they introduced FFT
algorithm.

Contributions
He introduced the Tukey’s range test or the
Turkey method which is a one step multiple
comparison procedure and a arithmetical test(
He also has a significant contribution in Tukey
Lambda distribution, Tukey’s lemma and Tukey’s
test of additivity no wonder they bear his name.
His less known methods includes the trimean
and median-median line which is substitute to
linear reversion or progression.
Together with H. Friedman, they came up with
the theory of the projection pursuit.

Other contributions
He invented various statistical terms
especially in computer science.
The most commonly known are; 'bit’ which is
a short name for binary digit. This term was
first used in 1948 by Claude Shannon in his
article.
The second term that is believed to be
devised by Tukey is software in his paper
‘The teaching of Concrete Mathematics’.

Uses of his findings today.
Box plot which was invented by Tukey is used
to graphically portray groups of arithmetical
figures through their quartiles.
It is a consistent technique of showing the
dataset founded on a five-number summary of
 minimum,
 the maximum
 the sample median,
 and the first and third quartiles.
It is famously used in statistical distribution data study
especially in population data and have made a career
for individuals in bureau of statistics.

Uses of his findings.
FFT or the Fast Fourier transform algorithm is used
in digital processing or the DSP applied extensively
in audio processing, detectors and radars, sonar and
software definite radio.
It is also used in image and speech processing,
communication systems and signal exploration.
It has made a career for people working in radio
stations, T.V stations,aeronuetical industry and
marine industry.
All satellite equipment and apparatus use this
technique to relay information used by scientists and
space explorers.

Applications
Another discovery that was made by John
Tukey was the jackknife technique which is
used to estimate the discrepancy or error of
bias in a huge population.
It is one of the main method used in
resampling and drawing research
conclusions.
Researchers all over the world use this
technique for data analysis.

References
Haig, B. D. (2015). Commentary: Exploratory
data analysis. Frontiers in psychology, 6, 1247.
Dhamdhere, K., McCurley, K. S., Nahmias, R.,
Sundararajan, M., & Yan, Q. (2017, March).
Analyza: Exploring data with conversation. In
Proceedings of the 22nd International
Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (pp.
493-504).