STATISTICAL TOOLS FOR ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY MEASUREMENT

The above provocative statement begins the book, An Introduction to the Bootstrap, by Efron and Tibshirani (1993). It perhaps states the truth about the traditional lament among the organized statistics profession. “Why aren’t statisticians valued more in the practice of their profession?” This lament has been echoed for years in the addresses of presidents of the American Statistical Association, notably Donald Marquardt (The Importance of Statisticians, 1987), Robert Hogg (How to Hope With Statistics, 1989), and J. Stuart Hunter (Statistics as a Profession, 1994).