Source: John Boyer, 785-532-0518, jboyer@k-state.edu

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

CONSULTATION WORK IN STATISTICS ADDS UP TO SPECIAL HONOR FOR K-STATE'S DALLAS JOHNSON

MANHATTAN -- The American Statistical Association is honoring a Kansas State University professor emeritus of statistics for his work.

Dallas Johnson will receive the W.J. Dixon Award for Excellence in Statistical Consulting at the association's Joint Statistics Meetings in early August in Vancouver, British Columbia. Johnson is only the second recipient of the annual award, which was first awarded in 2009.

Johnson, who retired from K-State in 2006, had a long and distinguished career as a faculty member and consultant. He served 31 years in the department of statistics.

"He was always very busy and was constantly sought after because of his vast knowledge of a wide variety of statistical areas and his ability to bring his consultees up to speed so that they had their own understanding of their results," said John Boyer, professor and former head of the K-State department of statistics. "He was truly outstanding in these one-on-one settings, whether he was working with another statistician, a faculty colleague in another area, or students just beginning to grasp the statistical methodologies appropriate to the work they were doing."

Johnson also worked with his K-State colleague and friend George Milliken on their "messy data" series of books. The first of these, "Analysis of Messy Data, Volume I: Designed Experiments," was published in 1984 and earned both men national reputations. The pair revised the book in 2004.

The book spawned an assortment of short courses, workshops, traveling courses and seminars that strongly influenced a whole generation of statisticians, students, subject matter researchers and statistical consultants, Boyer said. The book describes not only methods of analysis, but also provides strong guidance on how and when to apply those methods, gives advice about diagnostic tools, and exhibits code for software that will accomplish the necessary tasks.

Johnson then co-authored two more books in the messy data series, one on analysis of covariance and another on nonreplicated experiments. In 1998 he authored a successful text on multivariate analysis, "Applied Multivariate Methods for Data Analysts."

Boyer said Johnson's talents have not been confined to K-State. He has done consultation work for the federal government, including for the Environmental Protection Agency as a member of its Human Studies Review Board. He has advised a number of researchers on methodologies for conducting their experiments and has helped guide the agency on oversight of sponsored research.

Johnson, who was raised in Central City, Neb., earned a bachelor's from Kearney State College in Nebraska, a master's from Western Michigan University and a doctorate in statistics from Colorado State University.

His many honors include being named a Fellow of the American Statistical Association, which also presented him with the Founders' Award, the highest honor given for service to the organization. In addition, he served as the first editor of the association's Journal of Agricultural, Biological, and Environmental Statistics.