Talk:Michael Woodroofe

Although I have a COI, I've attempted to write a neutral article, and have solicited feedback from his colleagues and former students. Notability is obviously achieved under Criterion 5 and 8 of academic notability, and I believe also under 1 and 3. Russ Woodroofe (talk) 09:56, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

Death

Michael Woodroofe (my dad) died last week. I've added a death notice from the University of Michigan statistics department, and done some other minor cleanup. (An IP editor had already added the death date in the infobox.) I think that there was little judgement required in how to add the bare death facts, so I did so myself. I may also add some references (e.g., book reviews) over the next few days as per WP:COIU. On the other hand: I'm expecting some more substantial obituaries and memorials to follow over the next months. Expanding the article from these will require judgement, and I will certainly not try to do this myself; I'll list references here instead. Russ Woodroofe (talk) 04:21, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

My condolences. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 11:46, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

Very sorry for your loss. I'll try to help with this as needed. Qflib, aka KeeYou Flib (talk) 18:59, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

October 2023 suggested edits

Qflib, thank you sincerely for offering to help; thank you also to any other page-watchers who may want to look at the below. It's taken me some time to get to making a request, partly because I was waiting for his memorial conference. I made a couple of edits that I believe to be noncontroversial (reordering references, adding reviews of his books) myself, but am avoiding anything that involves any significant judgement. I have the following additional suggestions:

Small style changes:

• The reference "Michael_Woodroofe_Formal_Obituary.pdf" would be better as

References

I should point out that I wrote this obit (in consultation with other family and with his colleagues).

• I think that a paragraph-formatted "Awards and honors" section is generally preferred over the bullet-point list.

Probably straightforward:

• Perhaps "distinguished" should be walked down to "successful" in the sentence about his graduate students. (Or perhaps there is something better to do there; to be clear, I'm suggesting a little more restraint.)
• I'd suggest removing the "Remembering Michael Woodroofe" source as redundant with the University Record source, and replacing with his obituary published by the IMS:

References

Full issue at [1]. This obit looks to also otherwise be a useful source.

• For completeness, and to record sources, other obituaries include: American Statistical Association [2], but this is pretty brief. The American Mathematical Society's is also very brief [3]. An obit also appeared in the East Oregonian; I didn't quickly find a link and don't think this one adds so much anyway.
• It'd be worthwhile to make clearer in the article that "Recent developments in nonparametric inference and probability" is a Festschrift for the birthday conference.
• A memorial conference was held in his honor September 29-30 of this year (2023). Probably can cite to the conference webpage:

References

(I don't believe that a Festschrift is planned.)

• It would be worthwhile to add that he became an elected member of the International Statistical Institute in 1992. The year of election is given in [4] (unfortunately, this list requires some navigating); that he was an elected member is stated in the "Michael Woodroofe Lecture Series" source, also in the preface to the Festschrift "Recent developments in nonparametric inference and probability" [5], or in the brief AmStat obit previously mentioned.
• It might or might not be worthwhile to mention that he was the chair of the Department of Statistics from 1977 through 1983, sourced to the IMS obit.
• It seems worthwhile to expand "Woodroofe died on February 22, 2022, at the age of 81" to something like "Woodroofe died on February 22, 2022, at the age of 81 after a period of ill health" or "Woodroofe died on February 22, 2022, at the age of 81 after a struggle with dementia" or similar.
• The IMS obit discusses his research in a reliable, non-primary source. It would be good to add that obit as a source at the end of the paragraph beginning "Woodroofe was particularly noted for his work ..." It would be possible to develop a better paragraph based on the IMS obit and/or the (longer version of the) University Record obit. As a COI editor, non-statistician, etc, I should take a particularly light hand here.

Question:

• Would it be worthwhile to add an image to the article? I think that the author of the poster for the memorial conference (similar to what is near the top of the conference webpage) [6] would be willing to put a medium-resolution version on commons. Perhaps something like this would be appropriate to have next to or slightly below "Awards and honors"?

Sorry to write a small book here! I think that most of the suggested changes are straightforward. I could implement much of this myself, if a non-COIed editor gives the ok; or I could use the edit request template if you are busy. Thank you again! Russ Woodroofe (talk) 10:49, 30 October 2023 (UTC)