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Leland Wilkinson

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Leland Wilkinson
Born(1944-11-05)November 5, 1944
DiedDecember 10, 2021(2021-12-10)(aged 77)
Lake Forest, Illinois,U.S.
Alma mater
Known forThe Grammar of Graphics
Spouses
Ruth Elaine VanDemark
​
​
(m.1967; died 2012)​
Marilyn Vogel
​
(m.2013)​
Children2, includingAmie Wilkinson
RelativesAlec Wilkinson(brother)
Scientific career
Institutions
ThesisThe effect of involvement on similarity and preference structures(1975)

Leland Wilkinson(November 5, 1944 – December 10, 2021) was an Americanstatisticianandcomputer scientistat H2O.ai and Adjunct Professor of Computer Science atUniversity of Illinois at Chicago.Wilkinson developed theSYSTATstatistical package in the early 1980s, sold it toSPSSin 1995, and worked at SPSS for 10 years recruiting and managing the visualization team. He left SPSS in 2008 and became Executive VP of SYSTAT Software Inc. in Chicago. He then served as the VP of Data Visualization at Skytree, Inc and VP of Statistics atTableau Softwarebefore joining H2O.ai. His research focused onscientific visualizationandstatistical graphics.In these communities he was well known for his bookThe Grammar of Graphics,[1]which was the foundation for theRpackageggplot2.

Early life

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Wilkinson was born on November 5, 1944, to Kirk C. Wilkinson, an art editor ofWoman's Daymagazine.[2][3]He is the brother ofAlec Wilkinson,a writer forThe New Yorker.He graduated from theTrinity-Pawling SchoolinPawling, New York.[3]

Wilkinson received aBachelor of ArtsfromHarvard Universityin 1966,[3]aBachelor of Sacred TheologyfromHarvard Divinity Schoolin 1969, and aPh.D.in psychology fromYale Universityin 1975.[4]His thesis was titledThe effect of involvement on similarity and preference structures.[4]

Career

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Academic career

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While attending Yale between 1974 and 1976, he served as an instructor of psychology. He became an assistant professor of psychology atUniversity of Illinois at Chicago(UIC) in 1976 and was promoted to associate professor in 1980. In 1991, he became an adjunct professor of statistics atNorthwestern University.He remained in that role until 2010. He rejoined UIC in 2007 as an adjunct professor of computer science.[4]

Wilkinson was recognized as the primary author of the 1999American Psychological Association's guidelines for statistical methods in psychology journals.[5]

Professional career

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Wilkinson wroteSYSTAT,a statistical software package, in the early 1980s. This program was noted for its comprehensive graphics,[6]including the first software implementation of theheatmapdisplay now widely used among biologists. After his company grew to 50 employees, he sold it toSPSSin 1995. At SPSS, he assembled a team of graphics programmers who developed the nViZn platform[7]that produces the visualizations inSPSS,Clementine,and other analytics products. The nViZn platform was modeled after Wilkinson's 1999 book on statistical graphics,The Grammar of Graphics.[1]This book also served as the foundation for theRpackageggplot2,[8]thePythonBokeh package,[9]the R package ggbio,[10]theVegadeclarative language, and helped shape the Polaris project atStanford University.[11]

Wilkinson served as the vice president of statistics atTableau Software,where he continued to work on scientific visualization and statistical graphics.[12]In 2016, he became a chief scientist at H2O.ai to lead a data visualization push;[13]he remained in that role until his death in 2021.[12]

Personal life

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Wilkinson married Reverend Ruth Elaine VanDemark on June 23, 1967.[3]She died in 2012.[14]Together, they were the parents ofAmie Wilkinson,a professor of mathematics atUniversity of Chicago,and Caroline Wilkinson, a writer.[15]He later married Marilyn Vogel.[16]

Wilkinson died on December 10, 2021, atNorthwestern Lake Forest Hospital,inLake Forest, Illinois.[17]

Awards

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Wilkinson became a Fellow of theAmerican Statistical Associationin 1998 and a Fellow of theAmerican Association for the Advancement of Sciencein 2009. He was an elected member of theInternational Statistical Institutein 2006.[4]Wilkinson received theNational Institute of Statistical SciencesDistinguished Service Award in 2010.[4]

References

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  1. ^abLeland Wilkinson,The Grammar of Graphics,Springer, 1999.ISBN0-387-98774-6.at Springer
  2. ^Wilkinson, Leland; Wills, Graham; Wills, D.; Dubbs, R.; Norton, A. (2006).The Grammar of Graphics.p. 98.
  3. ^abcd"Ruth VanDemark becomes a bride".The New York Times.June 24, 1967.RetrievedDecember 14,2021.
  4. ^abcde"Leland Wilkinson"(PDF).SPSS.2005. Archived fromthe original(PDF)on November 10, 2006.RetrievedDecember 14,2021.
  5. ^Osborne, Jason W. (2013).Best Practices in Data Cleaning.p. 13.
  6. ^Jarrett, Jeffrey (1992). "SYSTAT/SYGRAPH and Micro-TSP".Statistics and Computing.2(4): 231–236.doi:10.1007/BF01889683.S2CID119499841.
  7. ^Jones, Lacey; Symanzik, Jürgen."Statistical Visualization of Environmental Data on the Web Using nViZn"(PDF).Archived fromthe original(PDF)on October 5, 2011.
  8. ^"ggplot2: Create Elegant Data Visualisations Using the Grammar of Graphics".CRAN (R programming language).June 25, 2021.RetrievedDecember 14,2021.
  9. ^"Bokeh".GitHub.RetrievedJuly 17,2013.
  10. ^Lawrence, Michael (2012)."ggbio: an R package for extending the grammar of graphics for genomic data".Genome Biology.13(8): R77.doi:10.1186/gb-2012-13-8-r77.PMC4053745.PMID22937822.
  11. ^"Polaris, interactive database visualization".Stanford University.Archivedfrom the original on October 21, 2021.RetrievedDecember 14,2021.
  12. ^ab"VP, STATISTICS | Leland Wilkinson".research.tableau.Tableau Research.RetrievedDecember 14,2021.
  13. ^Zakrzewski, Cat (April 20, 2016)."Machine Learning Co. H2O.ai Hires Leland Wilkinson to Lead Data Visualization Drive".The Wall Street Journal.RetrievedDecember 14,2021.
  14. ^"Rev. Ruth E. Van Demark 1944–2012".Illinois State Bar Association.July 19, 2012.RetrievedDecember 14,2021.
  15. ^"Ruth E. VanDemark (1944–2012) – Obituary".michalikfuneralhome.2012.RetrievedDecember 14,2021.
  16. ^Hauser, Alisa (February 10, 2014)."Victorian Mansion on Wicker Park's Beer Baron's Row Sells for $2.3 Million".DNAinfo.RetrievedDecember 14,2021.
  17. ^"Leland Wilkinson, creator of The Grammar of Graphics, passed away".FlowingData.December 13, 2021.RetrievedDecember 14,2021.
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