Florence Nightingale David

Florence Nightingale David, also known as F. N. David (23 August 1909 – 23 July 1993) was an English statistician. She was head of the Statistics Department at the University of California, Riverside between 1970 – 77 and her research interests included the history of probability and statistical ideas.

Early life and education David was born on 23 August 1909 in Ivington, near Leominster, England. Her parents were Florence Maude and William Richard David who were both Elementary School head teachers. By that age she already knew some arithmetic, so she began with algebra. Since David already knew English, the parson taught her Latin and Greek.

David received a scholarship and continued her studies with Karl Pearson at University College, London, as his research assistant. In this function she produced tables for the correlation coefficient. All the calculations were done on a hand-cranked mechanical calculator known as a Brunsviga.

During World War II, David worked as an Experimental Officer in the Ordnance Board for the Ministry of Supply, a Senior Statistician for the Research and Experiments Department for the Ministry of Home Security; a Member of the Land Mines Committee of the Scientific Advisory Council, and as a Scientific Advisor on Mines to the Military Experimental Establishment. In 1968 she moved to California permanently and became a professor, and in 1970 the chair, in the Department of Statistics at the University of California, Riverside, and was the book review editor for the journal Biometrics for four years.

By 1977 she retired and became professor emeritus and Research Associate in Biostatistics at the University of California at Berkeley, where she continued to teach and do research in Biostatistics.

David died of lung cancer on 23 July 1993 in Kensington, Contra Costa County, California. She was also a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics.

In conjunction with other numerous academic honours, in 1992 David won the first Elizabeth L. Scott Award "...for her efforts in opening the door to women in statistics; for contributions to the professions over many years; for contributions to education, science, and public service; for research contributions to combinatorics, statistical methods, applications and understanding history; and her spirit as a lecturer and as a role model.". The university named a library for her, and in 2001 established the Florence Nightingale David Award.

Contributions David's research resulted in advances in combinatorics, including a clear exposition of complicated methods. She studied the Correlation coefficient, and computed solutions of complicated multiple integrals, using the distribution of the correlation coefficient.

Personal life David was lesbian. During her time at Berkeley, she lived with Evelyn Fix until the latter's passing in 1965.

Publications David published ten books and more than 100 papers, 1948: (with N.L. Johnson) The probability integral transformation when parameters are estimated from the sample 1949: Probability theory of statistical methods 1951: Probability theory for statistical methods 1952: The truncated poisson 1953: A statistical primer 1954: (with P.G. Moore) Notes on contagious distributions in plant populations 1954: (with N.L. Johnson) Statistical Treatment of Censored Data Part I. Fundamental Formulae 1961: (with Evelyn Fix) Rank correlation and regression in a nonnormal surface 1961: (with Egon Sharpe Pearson) Elementary statistical exercises 1962: (with D.E. Barton) Combinatorial Chance 1962: Games, Gods and Gambling . 1966: Symmetric function and allied tables 1968: Normal centroids, medians and scores for ordinal data 1971: A first course in statistics