Pranab Kumar Sen (7 November 1937 – 31 December 2023) was an Indian-American statistician who was a professor of statistics and the Cary C. Boshamer Professor of Biostatistics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.[1][2]
Pranab Kumar Sen | |
|---|---|
| Born | 7 November 1937 |
| Died | 31 December 2023 (aged 86) |
| Citizenship | American |
| Alma mater | University of Calcutta (B.Sc., M.Sc., Ph.D.) |
| Known for | |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Statistics |
| Institutions | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill |
| Doctoral advisor | Hari Kinkar Nandi |
| Doctoral students | |
Biography
editPranab Kumar Sen was born in Calcutta, Bengal Presidency, India on 7 November 1937,[3] as the second of seven siblings. His father, a railway officer, died of leukemia when Sen was ten, and he was raised by his mother, the daughter of a physician.[4] He began his undergraduate studies at Presidency College, Kolkata, initially intending to study medicine but shifting to statistics when it was discovered that he was too young for medical college.[4] He received a B.S. from the University of Calcutta in 1955, an M.Sc. in 1957, and a Ph.D. in 1962;[3][2][5] his doctoral advisor was Hari Kinkar Nandi.[6][4] He taught for three years at the University of Calcutta and one more year at the University of California, Berkeley before joining the UNC faculty in 1965; although he has held visiting positions at other universities, he remained at Chapel Hill for the rest of his career.[3][2] He was the founding co-editor of two journals, Sequential Analysis and Statistics and Decisions,[4] and was joint editor-in-chief of the Journal of Statistical Planning and Inference from 1980 to 1983.[3]
Sen died in Chapel Hill, North Carolina on 31 December 2023, at the age of 86.[7]
Research and graduate advising
editSen was the author or co-author of multiple books on non-parametric statistics, the advisor of over 80 Ph.D. students, and the author of over 600 research publications.[3][8] He is known for inventing the Hodges–Lehmann estimator independently of and contemporaneously with Hodges and Lehmann[4][9] and for the Theil–Sen estimator, a form of robust regression that fits a line to two-dimensional sample points by choosing the slope of the fit line to be the median of the slopes of the lines through pairs of samples.[10][11]
Awards and honors
editSen was a fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics[12] and of the American Statistical Association (ASA).[13] He became the Cary C. Boshamer Professor in 1982.[3] He was the Lukacs Distinguished Visiting Professor at Bowling Green State University in 1996–1997.[14] In 2002, he won the Gottfried E. Noether Senior Scholar Award of the ASA,[15] and he was the 2010 winner of its Wilks Memorial Award "for outstanding contributions to statistical research, especially in nonparametric statistics and biostatistics; and for exceptional service in mentoring doctoral students."[16] The Government of India awarded him the civilian honour of Padma Shri in 2011.[17] In 2012, the University of Calcutta awarded him an honorary Doctor of Science degree.[18]
In 2007, a festschrift was dedicated to him on the occasion of his 70th birthday.[4][8]
Books authored
edit- Sen, Pranab K.; Singer, Julio M.; Pedroso de Lima, Antonio (2010). From Finite Sample to Asymptotic Methods in Statistics. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-87722-0.
- Hájek, Jaroslav; Šidák, Zbyněk; Sen, Pranab K. (1999). Theory of Rank Tests (2nd ed.). San Diego: Academic Press. ISBN 0-12-642350-4.
- Puri, Madan L.; Sen, Pranab K. (1985). Nonparametric Methods in General Linear Models. New York: Wiley. ISBN 978-0471702276.
- Puri, Madan L.; Sen, Pranab K. (1971). Nonparametric Methods in Multivariate Analysis. New York: Wiley. ISBN 978-0471702405.
References
edit- ^ "Pranab K. Sen Obituary | UNC Statistics & Operations Research". stor.unc.edu. Retrieved 1 February 2024.
- ^ a b c Faculty profile, UNC Chapel Hill, retrieved 3 July 2011.
- ^ a b c d e f Curriculum vitae Archived 20 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine, retrieved 3 July 2011.
- ^ a b c d e f Ghosh, Malay; Schell, Michael J. (2008), "A Conversation with Pranab Kumar Sen", Statistical Science, 23 (4): 548–564, arXiv:0906.4165, doi:10.1214/08-STS255, S2CID 62558615.
- ^ Pranab Kumar Sen at the Mathematics Genealogy Project.
- ^ "H. K. Nandi's Contributions to Statistics–An Appreciation". Calcutta Statistical Association Bulletin. 40 (1–4): 1–22. 1990. doi:10.1177/0008068319900503. ISSN 0008-0683.
- ^ "Pranab K. Sen Obituary". UNC. 20 January 2024. Retrieved 5 February 2024.
- ^ a b Balakrishnan, N.; Pena, E.; Silvapulle, M. J. (2008), "Pranab Kumar Sen: Life and Works", Beyond Parametrics in Interdisciplinary Research: Festschrift in Honor of Professor Pranab K. Sen, IMS, pp. 1–16, arXiv:0805.2229, doi:10.1214/193940307000000013, S2CID 88512698.
- ^ Lehmann, Erich L. (2006). Nonparametrics: Statistical methods based on ranks (Reprinting of 1988 revision of 1975 Holden-Day ed.). New York: Springer. pp. 176 and 200–201. ISBN 978-0-387-35212-1. MR 0395032.
- ^ Rousseeuw, Peter J.; Leroy, Annick M. (2003), Robust Regression and Outlier Detection, Wiley Series in Probability and Mathematical Statistics, vol. 516, Wiley, p. 67, ISBN 978-0-471-48855-2.
- ^ Wilcox, Rand R. (2001), "Theil–Sen estimator", Fundamentals of Modern Statistical Methods: Substantially Improving Power and Accuracy, Springer-Verlag, pp. 207–210, ISBN 978-0-387-95157-7.
- ^ IMS Fellows Archived 2 March 2014 at the Wayback Machine, retrieved 3 July 2011.
- ^ ASA Fellows, retrieved 3 July 2011.
- ^ Bowling Green State University: Eugene Lukacs Professors Archived 12 August 2011 at the Wayback Machine, retrieved 3 July 2011.
- ^ Gottfried E. Noether Awards, retrieved 3 July 2011.
- ^ "UNC Gillings community mourns Professor Emeritus Pranab Sen". UNC Gillings School of Public Health. 5 January 2024. Retrieved 12 April 2024.
- ^ "Padma Awards" (PDF). Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India. 2015. Retrieved 21 July 2015.
- ^ "Annual Convocation". University of Calcutta. Archived from the original on 28 May 2012.