mathematics

Leland Wilkinson

Leland Wilkinson is a mathematics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Leland Wilkinson rather than just read about it. In short: Leland Wilkinson (November 5, 1944 – December 10, 2021) was an American statistician and computer scientist at H2O.ai and adjunct professor of computer science at University of Illinois at Chicago. Wilkinson developed the SYSTAT statistical package in the early 1980s, sold it to SPSS in 1995, and worked at SPSS for 10 years recruiting and managing the visualization team.

Key takeaways

Leland Wilkinson belongs to mathematics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Leland Wilkinson to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Leland Wilkinson from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Leland Wilkinson (November 5, 1944 – December 10, 2021) was an American statistician and computer scientist at H2O.ai and adjunct professor of computer science at University of Illinois at Chicago. Wilkinson developed the SYSTAT statistical package in the early 1980s, sold it to SPSS in 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 at Tableau Software before joining H2O.ai. His research focused on scientific visualization and statistical graphics. In these communities he was well known for his book The Grammar of Graphics, which was the foundation for the R package ggplot2.

Early life Wilkinson was born on November 5, 1944, to Kirk C. Wilkinson, an art editor of Woman's Day magazine. He is the brother of Alec Wilkinson, a writer for The New Yorker. He graduated from the Trinity-Pawling School in Pawling, New York. Wilkinson received a Bachelor of Arts from Harvard University in 1966, a Bachelor of Sacred Theology from Harvard Divinity School in 1969, and a Ph.D. in psychology from Yale University in 1975. His thesis was titled The effect of involvement on similarity and preference structures.

Career

Academic career While attending Yale between 1974 and 1976, he served as an instructor of psychology. He became an assistant professor of psychology at University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) in 1976 and was promoted to associate professor in 1980. In 1991, he became an adjunct professor of statistics at Northwestern University. He remained in that role until 2010. He rejoined UIC in 2007 as an adjunct professor of computer science. Wilkinson was recognized as the primary author of the 1999 American Psychological Association's guidelines for statistical methods in psychology journals.

Professional career Wilkinson wrote SYSTAT, a statistical software package, in the early 1980s. This program was noted for its comprehensive graphics, including the first software implementation of the heatmap display now widely used among biologists. After his company grew to 50 employees, he sold it to SPSS in 1995. At SPSS, he assembled a team of graphics programmers who developed the nViZn platform that produces the visualizations in SPSS, Clementine, and other analytics products. The nViZn platform was modeled after Wilkinson's 1999 book on statistical graphics, The Grammar of Graphics. This book also served as the foundation for the R package ggplot2, the Python Bokeh package, the R package ggbio, the Vega declarative language, and helped shape the Polaris project at Stanford University. Wilkinson served as the vice president of statistics at Tableau Software, where he continued to work on scientific visualization and statistical graphics. In 2016, he became a chief scientist at H2O.ai to lead a data visualization push; he remained in that role until his death in 2021.

Personal life Wilkinson married Reverend Ruth Elaine VanDemark on June 23, 1967. She died in 2012. Together, they were the parents of Amie Wilkinson, a professor of mathematics at University of Chicago, and Caroline Wilkinson, a writer. He later married Marilyn Vogel. Wilkinson died on December 10, 2021, at Northwestern Lake Forest Hospital, in Lake Forest, Illinois.

Awards Wilkinson became a Fellow of the American Statistical Association in 1998 and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2009. He was an elected member of the International Statistical Institute in 2006. Wilkinson received the National Institute of Statistical Sciences Distinguished Service Award in 2010.

References

External links Leland Wilkinson's academic home page

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Leland Wilkinson

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Leland Wilkinson claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In mathematics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Leland Wilkinson before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Leland Wilkinson ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Leland Wilkinson

In research: Leland Wilkinson appears in mathematics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Leland Wilkinson in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Leland Wilkinson is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1944 births, 2021 deaths, American statisticians, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Leland Wilkinson outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Leland Wilkinson in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Leland Wilkinson means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Leland Wilkinson out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Leland Wilkinson in simple terms?

Why does Leland Wilkinson matter?

Because it connects several mathematics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Leland Wilkinson?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Leland Wilkinson.