Remembering Gertrude Cox

摘要

In March of 1950, my GI Bill funding ran out just as I completed my master's degree requirements in the department of statistics in Raleigh. Jack Rigney, chair of the department, asked me to present the results of my work at the next department seminar. As was customary, I selected a humorous article from the current Saturday Evening Post to introduce my presentation. It was the story of a brief encounter between one of a community's highly respected preachers and the chair of the local school system, who had just arrived with a doctorate from The Teachers' College at Columbia University. In the course of their brief conversation, the educator said to the preacher, "Doesn't it ever bother you that people wonder why you do not have a PhD?" Whereupon the preacher replied, "I'd rather have them wonder why I don't have a PhD than why I do have a PhD." Among those present at the seminar that day were our chair, Jack Rigney, and Gertrude Cox, director of the institute of statistics in North Carolina. Neither of these two people had a PhD!