Pre-eminent statistician puts knowledge to use at ASU

One of the most prominent statisticians in industrial engineering is teaching this semester at ASU.

J. Stuart Hunter is “among the most influential industrial statisticians of the last 50 years,” says longtime Hunter colleague Douglas Montgomery, an ASU Regents’ Professor in the Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering.

Students in Hunter’s graduate-level course, “Analysis of Time-Dependent Data,” are getting an opportunity to benefit from the experience of “a pioneer of industrial experimental design,” Montgomery says.

Hunter retired in 1988 as professor emeritus in the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Princeton University. He has spent many years since as an industry consultant, continuing his work on defining and quantifying such basic industrial engineering concepts as efficiency, quality, reliability and safety.

His ideas have been applied to a wide spectrum of pursuits in manufacturing, product design, and production systems development and improvement.

Hunter “has made fundamental contributions,” to research in those areas, Montgomery says, adding: “People are using his ideas every day to reduce process failure, efficiently allocate resources, and to market and deliver products and services effectively.”

The course he is teaching focuses on how to obtain accurate and useful data in constantly changing areas such as financial markets, environmental monitoring and business information systems.