mathematics

Nancy Reid

Nancy Reid 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 Nancy Reid rather than just read about it. In short: Nancy Margaret Reid (born September 17, 1952) is a Canadian theoretical statistician. She is a professor at the University of Toronto where she holds a Canada Research Chair in Statistical Theory.

Key takeaways

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

Reference excerpt

Nancy Margaret Reid (born September 17, 1952) is a Canadian theoretical statistician. She is a professor at the University of Toronto where she holds a Canada Research Chair in Statistical Theory. In 2015 Reid became Director of the Canadian Institute for Statistical Sciences. Reid has served as President of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics and the Statistical Society of Canada. She is co-editor of the Annual Review of Statistics and Its Application. In 1992, Reid received the COPSS Presidents' Award for outstanding contributions to statistics. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society, the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and the Royal Society of Canada; a Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences; and an Officer of the Order of Canada.

Education Nancy Reid was born in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada. She studied mathematics and statistics at the University of Waterloo, earning her B.Math in 1974. She earned her M.Sc. at the University of British Columbia in 1976. At Stanford University she worked with Rupert G. Miller, Jr., receiving her Ph.D. in 1979. Reid did postdoctoral work with David Cox at the Imperial College London from 1979 to 1980.

Career and research From 1980 to 1985, Reid was an associate professor at the University of British Columbia. She then joined the University of Toronto and has remained there ever since, becoming a full professor in 1988. Reid was the first woman to hold a Canada Research Chair in statistics. As Chair of the “Long Range Plan Steering Committee for Mathematics and Statistics” Reid shaped Canadian national policy on mathematical sciences, leading to the creation of the virtual distributed Canadian Institute for Statistical Sciences (CANSSI) in 2012. She has been the Director of CANSSI since 2015. Reid studies the foundations and properties of methods of statistical inference in order to discover how inferential statements can accurately and effectively summarize complex data sets. Reid served as Editor-in-Chief of The Canadian Journal of Statistics from 1995 to 1997 and the Annual Review of Statistics and Its Application (2018–). She served as President of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (1996–1997), and of the Statistical Society of Canada (2004–2005).

Awards and honours Reid won the COPSS Presidents' Award in 1992, the Krieger–Nelson Prize in 1995, the Statistical Society of Canada Gold Medal and Florence Nightingale David Award in 2009, and the Statistical Society of Canada Distinguished Service Award in 2013. She was made an Officer of the Order of Canada (awarded 2014, invested 2015) "for her leadership in the field of statistical inference, which has helped to facilitate sound public policy decision making." In 2022, Reid won the Guy medal in Gold "for her pioneering work on higher-order approximate inference which provides a foundational basis for optimal information extraction from data, and has wide-ranging impact on the practice of data analysis". In 1989 she was elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2001. She is also a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics. In 2015 she was elected a Corresponding Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and in 2016 a foreign associate of the United States National Academy of Sciences. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2018.

Bibliography

Books Hinkley, D. V.; Reid, N.; Snell, E. J., eds. (1991). Statistical theory and modelling : in honour of Sir David Cox, FRS. London: Chapman and Hall. ISBN 0-412-30590-9. OCLC 23213733. Cox, David R.; Reid, Nancy (2000). The theory of the design of experiments. Boca Raton: Chapman & Hall/CRC. ISBN 1-58488-195-X. OCLC 43864220. Brazzale, A. R.; Davison, A. C.; Reid, N. (2007). Applied asymptotics : case studies in small-sample statistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-511-28670-4. OCLC 166126731.

Selected papers Reid, Nancy (1981). "Influence Functions for Censored Data". The Annals of Statistics. 9 (1): 78–92. doi:10.1214/aos/1176345334. ISSN 0090-5364. JSTOR 2240871. Reid, N.; Crépeau, H. (1985). "Influence functions for proportional hazards regression". Biometrika. 72 (1): 1–9. doi:10.1093/biomet/72.1.1. ISSN 0006-3444. Cox, D. R.; Reid, N. (1987). "Parameter Orthogonality and Approximate Conditional Inference". Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series B (Methodological). 49 (1): 1–18. doi:10.1111/j.2517-6161.1987.tb01422.x. Reid, N. (1988). "Saddlepoint Methods and Statistical Inference". Statistical Science. 3 (2). doi:10.1214/ss/1177012906. ISSN 0883-4237. Fraser, D. A. S.; Reid, N. (1993). "Third order asymptotic models: Likelihood functions leading to accurate approximations for distribution functions". Statistica Sinica. 3 (1): 67–82. ISSN 1017-0405. JSTOR 24304938. Reid, N. (1995). "The Roles of Conditioning in Inference". Statistical Science. 10 (2). doi:10.1214/ss/1177010027. ISSN 0883-4237. Reid, N. (2003). "Asymptotics and the theory of inference". The Annals of Statistics. 31 (6). doi:10.1214/aos/1074290325. ISSN 0090-5364. Ghosh, M.; Reid, N.; Fraser, D. A. S. (2010). "Ancillary statistics: a review". Statistica Sinica. 20 (4): 1309–1332. ISSN 1017-0405. JSTOR 24309506. Reid, Nancy (2013). "Aspects of likelihood inference". Bernoulli. 19 (4): 1404–1418. arXiv:1309.7816. doi:10.3150/12-BEJSP03. ISSN 1350-7265. JSTOR 23525757. S2CID 16144546. Tang, Yanbo; Reid, Nancy (2020). "Modified Likelihood root in High Dimensions". Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B: Statistical Methodology. 82 (5): 1349–1369. doi:10.1111/rssb.12389. ISSN 1369-7412. S2CID 225500790.

References

This article incorporates text available under the CC BY 4.0 license.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Nancy Reid

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Nancy Reid 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 Nancy Reid 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 Nancy Reid 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 Nancy Reid

In research: Nancy Reid 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 Nancy Reid 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: Nancy Reid is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1952 births, 21st-century Canadian statisticians, Academic staff of the University of British Columbia, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Nancy Reid 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.

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study Nancy Reid in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Nancy Reid 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 Nancy Reid out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Nancy Reid in simple terms?

Nancy Margaret Reid (born September 17, 1952) is a Canadian theoretical statistician. She is a professor at the University of Toronto where she holds a Canada Research Chair in Statistical Theory.

Why does Nancy Reid 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 Nancy Reid?

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 Nancy Reid.