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A Conversation with James O. Ramsay

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  • Christian Genest
  • Johanna G. Nešlehová

Abstract

type="main" xml:id="insr12053-abs-0001"> Jim Ramsay was born on September 5, 1942, in Prince George, British Columbia. He pursued undergraduate studies at the University of Alberta, where he completed a BEd in 1964 with a major in English and a minor in mathematics. He then specialized in statistics and psychometry, earning a PhD in psychology from Princeton University in 1966. After holding a temporary lectureship in the Department of Psychology at University College London for one year, he joined the Department of Psychology at McGill University, where he rose through the academic ranks. He was chair of his department from 1986 to 1989 and spent sabbatical leaves in Cambridge, Grenoble, and Toulouse. He was named professor emeritus upon his retirement in 2007. Jim is the author of four influential books and over 100 peer-reviewed articles in statistical and psychometric journals. He developed much of the statistical theory behind multidimensional scaling and is widely recognized as the founder of functional data analysis. Three of his papers were read to the Royal Statistical Society, and another won The Canadian Journal of Statistics 2000 Best Paper Award. The Statistical Society of Canada (SSC) awarded him a Gold Medal for research in 1998 and an honorary membership in 2012. Jim was president of the Psychometric Society in 1981–82 and president of the SSC in 2002–03. The following conversation took place at Jim's home in Ottawa, Ontario, on March 14 and April 4, 2012.

Suggested Citation

  • Christian Genest & Johanna G. Nešlehová, 2014. "A Conversation with James O. Ramsay," International Statistical Review, International Statistical Institute, vol. 82(2), pages 161-183, August.
  • Handle: RePEc:bla:istatr:v:82:y:2014:i:2:p:161-183
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. J. O. Ramsay, 1998. "Estimating smooth monotone functions," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 60(2), pages 365-375.
    2. J. Ramsay, 1980. "Some small sample results for maximum likelihood estimation in multidimensional scaling," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 45(1), pages 139-144, March.
    3. J. Ramsay, 1980. "The joint analysis of direct ratings, pairwise preferences, and dissimilarities," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 45(2), pages 149-165, June.
    4. J. Ramsay, 1969. "Some statistical considerations in multidimensional scaling," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 34(2), pages 167-182, June.
    5. J. Ramsay, 1973. "The effect of number of categories in rating scales on precision of estimation of scale values," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 38(4), pages 513-532, December.
    6. Ramsay, James O. & Ramsey, James B., 2002. "Functional data analysis of the dynamics of the monthly index of nondurable goods production," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 107(1-2), pages 327-344, March.
    7. J. Ramsay & S. Winsberg, 1991. "Maximum marginal likelihood estimation for semiparametric item analysis," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 56(3), pages 365-379, September.
    8. J. Ramsay, 1975. "Solving implicit equations in psychometric data analysis," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 40(3), pages 337-360, September.
    9. Theodoro Koulis & James Ramsay & Daniel Levitin, 2008. "From Zero to Sixty: Calibrating Real-Time Responses," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 73(2), pages 321-339, June.
    10. Natasha Rossi & Xiaohui Wang & James O. Ramsay, 2002. "Nonparametric Item Response Function Estimates with the EM Algorithm," Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, , vol. 27(3), pages 291-317, September.
    11. Philippe Besse & J. Ramsay, 1986. "Principal components analysis of sampled functions," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 51(2), pages 285-311, June.
    12. Stigler, Stephen M., 2010. "The Changing History of Robustness," The American Statistician, American Statistical Association, vol. 64(4), pages 277-281.
    13. Suzanne Winsberg & James Ramsay, 1981. "Analysis of pairwise preference data using integrated B-splines," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 46(2), pages 171-186, June.
    14. J. Ramsay, 1989. "A comparison of three simple test theory models," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 54(3), pages 487-499, September.
    15. J. Ramsay, 1990. "Matfit: A fortran subroutine for comparing two matrices in a subspace," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 55(3), pages 551-553, September.
    16. J. Ramsay, 1978. "Confidence regions for multidimensional scaling analysis," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 43(2), pages 145-160, June.
    17. Kneip, Alois & Ramsay, James O, 2008. "Combining Registration and Fitting for Functional Models," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 103(483), pages 1155-1165.
    18. S. Winsberg & J. Ramsay, 1983. "Monotone spline transformations for dimension reduction," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 48(4), pages 575-595, December.
    19. Dauxois, J. & Pousse, A. & Romain, Y., 1982. "Asymptotic theory for the principal component analysis of a vector random function: Some applications to statistical inference," Journal of Multivariate Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 136-154, March.
    20. Laura M. Sangalli & James O. Ramsay & Timothy O. Ramsay, 2013. "Spatial spline regression models," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 75(4), pages 681-703, September.
    21. Hooker, Giles & Ramsay, James O., 2012. "Learned-loss boosting," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 56(12), pages 3935-3944.
    22. Cao, J. & Ramsay, J. O., 2010. "Linear Mixed-Effects Modeling by Parameter Cascading," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 105(489), pages 365-374.
    23. J. Kruskal, 1964. "Nonmetric multidimensional scaling: A numerical method," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 29(2), pages 115-129, June.
    24. J. Kruskal, 1964. "Multidimensional scaling by optimizing goodness of fit to a nonmetric hypothesis," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 29(1), pages 1-27, March.
    25. Jiguo Cao & James Ramsay, 2007. "Parameter cascades and profiling in functional data analysis," Computational Statistics, Springer, vol. 22(3), pages 335-351, September.
    26. J. Ramsay, 1977. "Maximum likelihood estimation in multidimensional scaling," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 42(2), pages 241-266, June.
    27. J. Ramsay, 1991. "Kernel smoothing approaches to nonparametric item characteristic curve estimation," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 56(4), pages 611-630, December.
    28. Michal Abrahamowicz & James Ramsay, 1992. "Multicategorical spline model for item response theory," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 57(1), pages 5-27, March.
    29. J. Ramsay, 1995. "A similarity-based smoothing approach to nondimensional item analysis," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 60(3), pages 323-339, September.
    30. J. O. Ramsay & G. Hooker & D. Campbell & J. Cao, 2007. "Parameter estimation for differential equations: a generalized smoothing approach," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 69(5), pages 741-796, November.
    31. J. Ramsay, 1982. "When the data are functions," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 47(4), pages 379-396, December.
    32. Cao, Jiguo & Ramsay, James O., 2009. "Generalized profiling estimation for global and adaptive penalized spline smoothing," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 53(7), pages 2550-2562, May.
    33. J. Ramsay, 1977. "Monotonic weighted power transformations to additivity," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 42(1), pages 83-109, March.
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