An Accidental Statistician

by George E P Box

  One intriguing event was the weekly seminar. It took place in the evening and began with hors d'oeuvres and the serving of excellent wine. A requirement was that we each present a talk pitched so that it was intelligible to a person with no specific knowledge of the subject. It was in one of these talks that I learned of the unusual behavior of some fireflies. The speaker, an organic chemist named Jerrold Meinwald, explained that the length of the signal flashes emitted by the female firefly was specific to her variety. He also told us about a very unpleasant species in which the female gave a signal that was not her own, and having attracted the associated type of male, she immediately ate him.

  Claire and I loved the islands of the Caribbean. In particular we enjoyed St. Lucia and Barbados, but perhaps our favorite was Dominica. One characteristic of the people of the Caribbean is their interest in the game of cricket. International cricket was played by England, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, and the West Indies. The West Indies team was made up of players from the previously British Caribbean countries, and the local interest in the game was intense. Everywhere you see little boys with a ball, and a piece of wood for a bat, playing cricket.

  We will long remember a taxi ride we took from one end of Dominica to the other. The taxi driver and his friend had a radio and were listening to a running commentary on a game between England and the West Indies in which England was being soundly beaten. The joy of the taxi man and his friend as one disaster followed another would be hard to exaggerate.

  Whether it was due to the fresh air or the cricket, the Dominicans were a fine–looking group of people, in marked contrast to some of the tourists who came each week in a large luxury liner. We were surprised to see that most of these passengers never left the ship, although some took pictures from the deck. A few did disembark, but only to walk a couple of hundred yards along the sea front. They had no idea what they were missing.

  Perhaps it was because Claire had four Swedish grandparents that we also enjoyed traveling in Scandinavia. In 1987, the Second International Tampere Conference in Statistics was held in Finland, where the waters are a lot cooler than those of the Caribbean. Before the conference, we were met by our friends Katerina and Lars-Erik Öller. We had taken a ship from Stockholm to Helsinki, and Lars-Erik accompanied us as we traveled north on the train to Tampere, and took us to their cottage on the Russian border.

  Dr. Tarmo Pukkila ran the conference, and he had arranged that on a free afternoon and evening, we were taken to a lake in a wilderness area 25 kilometers from Tampere, where there were two large saunas, one for the men and one for the women. The lake still had some ice along the edges, having only recently thawed. The idea was that you got cooked in the sauna and then ran outside, dived into the frigid lake, and then ran back. I dipped one toe in the water and that was enough, but most of the men did not venture even that far. Suddenly we saw two women running from their sauna toward the lake, Mrs. Pukkila and Claire. To the amazement of the men watching through the window, they both dived in and swam around in the ice-cold water for some time before they ran back to the sauna. We were even more impressed when someone shouted, “Here they come again!” And sure enough they did—three times in all.

  One of the most interesting—and hottest—places Claire and I visited was Egypt. In 1991, the International Statistical Institute met in Cairo, and Claire and I, Bovas and Annamma Abraham, Vijay Nair, Ron Sandland, and several others made the trip. We flew first to Israel, to attend the International Symposium in Industrial Statistics, and in Tel Aviv I had a chance to see my former student, David Steinberg, who was teaching statistics at Tel Aviv University.

  When it came time to catch our flight from Tel Aviv to Cairo, we arrived at the airport four hours before our scheduled takeoff because David had told us that getting through Israeli security was a long process. The lines at the airport were at a standstill. This was because each person was minutely questioned and examined. I don't recall how we passed the long wait, but Vijay Nair recalls that I told an “insider's joke” when I said, “I hadn't actually seen a stationary process until now.” When we finally had our turn at the security gate, the armed official questioned us closely. We explained that we were traveling to Egypt to present papers at the ISI meeting. He insisted that we each give a few minutes of our presentations, so I took from my briefcase some of the many plastic sheets I used on an overhead projector and gave an impromptu talk.

  When we arrived in Cairo, a city of close to 15 million people, we were impressed by the utter chaos in the streets, but Vijay, who had grown up in Malaysia, knew how to handle this. He calmly walked straight into the traffic hand held up. Miraculously vehicles parted to let him through, and we followed.

  The disfunction of Egypt's government was again in evidence when we went to the National Museum. This contains famous and precious antiquities, but the experience was sad, for these rare objects were not being cared for. For example, I recalled seeing on television the long queues of people in New York and London waiting to see the Tutankhamen exhibit. We found this in a remote room, where the mask was in a most neglected state.

  Later, on a trip to the Valley of the Kings at Luxor, we made our way down a tunnel that was just big enough to crawl through. At the bottom, the walls of the burial chamber were decorated with figures in gorgeous colors. This seemed to be a new tomb only recently opened, and again it was worrying that it was not being properly preserved.

  On a moonlight cruise up the Nile, we had dinner on the ship during which we were entertained by a belly dancer. She announced that she would teach someone to belly dance. For some reason I've never understood, she picked on me as a pupil. I think I did pretty well. I know everyone with a camera took many pictures of us (Figure 14.3).

  Figure 14.3 Learning to belly dance in Egypt.

  Many members of our group on the Egypt trip will recall how Claire's skills as a nurse were invaluable. Shortly before we left Egypt for the U.S., most of us had taken ill from something we had eaten. Annamma Abraham, who was from India, insisted that what would cure us was “hot meat”—in other words, fiery curry. It was our last day in Cairo, and although we had upset stomachs, we found an Asian buffet that served the “remedy.” Fortunately Claire had come prepared in the event that the curry failed us. She doled out enough cipro for an army, and we made the long journey home in relative comfort.

  It was during this trip that I met my friend Alex Kahlil once again. It had been almost 40 years since I had last seen him in Raleigh. He had returned to Egypt, and rather than pursuing statistics, he had become a citrus farmer.

  As I have said, I didn't have to know Claire long to realize that she was a formidable human being (Figure 14.4). A good example of this is when she took on the daunting task of designing and building our house. The first home we purchased had been a wonderful place to live, but it was a fair commute to Madison, so we decided to move closer to town. We bought an older home in the village of Shorewood, about two miles from the university. It was a Cape Cod with an expanded two-story addition at the back, and I had an office on the second floor.

  Figure 14.4 Protest in Madison (Claire and me.)

  We lived in the house for 6 years, but after a time, climbing stairs became difficult for me. We decided to look for a one-story home, but we found nothing that suited us. Fortunately when we bought the Shorewood house, we had also purchased a lot directly behind it. Claire had planted a garden there, as well as many trees. It occurred to her that, given our poor luck in finding the right house, she might build a new one, and build it on our back lot. I am a professor with a narrow set of skills, so I said, “If you will build it, I promise not to interfere.”

  Claire set about finding a builder, Associated Housewrights, and working with their architect on a design for a house. She was determined to build the house with environmental concerns in mind, and she found a company that had a similar philosophy. She put a lot of thought into the design, planning the house so that the rooms were both be
autiful and accessible. I inhabit the first floor with an office that has every thing I need and a lovely view of the garden. During the construction, she visited the carpenters almost every morning, bearing a plate of cream buns, which they greatly appreciated and which gave her the chance to observe the proceedings. The builders were true artisans. Claire was gone at times during the construction phase because her father was extremely ill and needed her care. On some occasions, the builders had to make decisions without her, and never failed her.

  Claire made sure that close by large windows that opened onto the trees, two comfortable chairs sat opposite one another from which there is an enticing view of the back woodland garden. Our view is filled with bird feeders and visited by a multitude of squirrels and raccoons. We spend many hours sitting by the window, in conversation, or in contented silence.

  “There's nothing like eating hay when you're feeling faint.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Many Sides of Mac

  For years, a staunch friend of mine has been Mac Berthouex (or more formally, Professor Paul Mac Berthouex) (Figure 15.1). He taught in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Wisconsin for 28 years, and he is a world expert on wastewater treatment. His knowledge of how to get a supply of drinkable water to almost any place you care to name has made him internationally famous, and he has spent many years working on projects abroad, usually in poor countries.

  Figure 15.1 Mac Berthouex and me.

  Clean water is essential to life, but there is only a certain amount of water in the world, and this must be used and reused. Nature has provided a means for this cleansing to be done. It is achieved by aerobic microorganisms that exist in every body of water that is exposed to air. About ten parts per million of oxygen can dissolve in perfectly clean water, and if you check, you'll find that some quantity slightly less than this is to found in streams, rivers, and oceans. Every natural body of water is to some extent slightly polluted. The pollutants provide aerobic organisms with nutrients, which they absorb at the expense of slightly lowering the level of dissolved oxygen. This sets up a tension, and as more oxygen is needed, more is dissolved, so that we have a permanent system for cleaning up the water supply on the planet. The aerobic organisms are quite remarkable; in a matter of a few hours, they can clean up even raw sewage using the activated sludge process1 employed in almost every town throughout the industrial world.

  Over the years, Mac and Bill Hunter worked on many projects together. Their friendship dated to Mac's student days at Wisconsin in the 1960s. Mac then spent time working overseas in Germany, returning in 1971 to assume a professorship in the Department of Engineering. He and his wife, Sue, moved into University Houses, and soon after their arrival, there was a knock on the door: It was a grinning Bill bearing bread, salt, and wine—“bread, that this house may never know hunger; salt, that life may always have flavor; and wine, that joy and prosperity may reign forever.”2

  Mac and Bill also shared the experience of having lived in Nigeria, although at different times. Mac witnessed the post-colonial disarray in Lagos for several months in 1970, ten years after Nigeria gained its independence from Britain. When he arrived in Lagos, 90% of the city's 800,000 inhabitants used shared taps, wells, and polluted streams for drinking water, and the sanitation infrastructure was virtually nonexistent.3 Mac's study of the problem, which represented the first time he had used multifactorial experiments on a job, doubled the supply of clean drinking water in the city. Part of his work involved a huge settling tank that had been built by the British in 1922. Two crocodiles lived there, and they would sun themselves on the surrounding wall. Later, when Mac taught experimental design to engineering students at Wisconsin, he proposed a factorial experiment in which one variable was whether there were crocs (or no crocs) in a particular settling tank.

  I was also fortunate to work with Mac in the late 1980s and 1990s when he had an NSF grant to study, among other things, how to improve control of wastewater treatment plants. We worked on two sets of data and tried to predict the quality of the effluent coming from the plant from a number of input variables measuring the strength of the effluent and a number of process variables.4 These predictions would then serve as an early warning of process upsets that could then hopefully be prevented.

  Mac's deep knowledge of water quality issues has taken him to Indonesia many times. He was a consultant to the government on environmental management techniques, a visiting professor on two occasions, and helped to design a new engineering campus. One of his biggest projects concerned industrial pollution control in Java. Claire and I were fortunate to benefit from our friend's acquaintance with this beautiful place when he and Sue invited us to join them on a memorable trip to Bali.

  I had been to Indonesia under very different circumstances in 1963. At that time, the University of Wisconsin was interested in directing some of its outreach programs toward Indonesia, which was experiencing political tumult. In 1963, Dean H. Edwin Young asked me to go there, under the auspices of the Ford Foundation, to review a proposal to support a large new university near Bandung. Tensions in Indonesia were high: President Sukarno had increased his ties with Communist China and actively fought the British-sponsored creation of the Federation of Malaysia in September 1963. On September 16, shortly before my arrival, mass demonstrations against the formation of Malaysia had resulted in the burning of the British Embassy and a British Major, Roderick Walker, had defied mob violence by parading up and down in front of the burning embassy, playing his bagpipes in full highland dress.

  When I arrived in Jakarta, I was accommodated at the only modern hotel, which the Japanese had built as part of their reparations. At first the huge dining room looked deserted, but from my table in the corner, I became aware that members of the British delegation who had lost their embassy were seated in the far corner across the room.

  To facilitate travel, the Ford Foundation allotted me a driver, who, it turned out, had two functions: In addition to driving, he was to carry my handwritten messages, for I was told on no account to use the telephone, which was tapped. I needed to make a number of trips from Jakarta to Bandung. The road was not very wide, and I was surprised one day when my driver guided the car into a ditch. This was to allow the passage of a group of vehicles consisting of two armored cars followed by a Rolls Royce and two more military vehicles, all traveling at great speed on the wrong side of the road. By way of explanation, my driver said, as we got back onto the road, “Presiden!” This was the usual way that Sukarno drove from place to place.

  Sukarno liked to be accompanied by beautiful women, and wherever he went there was a phalanx of such ladies lined up beside him. On one occasion, Sukarno was on the other side of the street where my colleague from the Ford Foundation and I were about to cross. Sukarno was heavily guarded by soldiers with a mass of weapons, and it was understood that one was not allowed to cross the street. But my friend did just that, beckoning me to follow. Apparently it was understood that Ford Foundation visitors were immune from attack.

  We fell in love with Bali. Mac and Sue found a wonderful place to stay, with simple but comfortable cabanas near the sea. Claire and I would arise at around 6 a.m. each morning, make our way to have coffee at a small restaurant overlooking the sea, and then be off for a walk.

  The beach, which was beautiful, had its share of young people selling various items to tourists, always with the assurance that things could be had at a “special price!” Nearby were the shops by the sea. These were canvas structures erected and disassembled each day that sold trinkets and articles of clothing. The ladies who owned the shops soon got to know us, and they were shocked when they realized that Claire and I were prepared to pay the asking price. We got to know Annie, in shop number 10, who was a friend of Mac and Sue's. Annie obligingly offered to teach her how to bargain. And so Claire, who had a Master's degree, got a very different kind of education. Insofar as I could understand it, the critical asking price was about twice
the expected selling price, but you needed to proceed by a slow sequence of small adjustments to get there.

  Sue, being a teacher of young children, often bought trinkets from Annie to take back as gifts to her students. Customs officials in Milwaukee once suspected Mac and Sue of being covert importers when they saw the packing list detailing what Sue had purchased and shipped to the States. The list contained things like “twenty baskets” and “a dozen dolls,” and Mac had a hard time convincing the officials that these were inexpensive mementos for six-year-olds.

  The Balinese are remarkable artists, and wood carving is one of their specialties. Master craftsmen patiently teach small groups, composed of perhaps four to six students each. They can be seen seated outdoors around the master. They work extremely slowly and carefully, often taking several weeks to complete a piece. Claire and I bought a beautiful and intricately carved statue of a dancing girl that stands close to four feet tall (Figure 15.2). The statue was made of dense ebony wood and was extremely heavy. We wondered how we were to get this delicately carved work of art some 10,000 miles back to the United States without damage. It turned out that there was a shop in Bali that specialized in packing and dispatching delicate objects in such a way that they were not broken, and sure enough, this was true for our beautiful dancer who today stands in our hallway.

  Figure 15.2 Balinese dancing girl.

  The Balinese also specialize in batik painting, which involves the use of wax and dyes, and we are fortunate to have one of these adorning a wall of our home (Figure 15.3).