In Memoriam of Dr. Paul I. Nelson

Dr. Paul Nelson passed away on December 9, 2021. Here is his obituary (https://themercury.com/obituaries/paul-nelson/article_05e279bc-c3a7-5432-9fc7-d89872c7680e.html).

Bonnie Nelson passed away in 2019. To read about Dr. Bonnie Nelson please see: https://englishkstate.org/2019/07/09/remembering-bonnie-nelson/

 

Paul Nelson was Professor of Statistics at Kansas State University. Paul retired in 2015 and was recognized for 32 years of dedicated service to the Department of Statistics. Paul earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics from Queen’s College, City of New York in 1963, a Master of Science degree in Mathematics from Rutgers University in 1965, a Master of Science degree in Statistics from Rutgers University in 1966, and a PhD in Statistics from Rutgers University in 1969. He served as an Assistant Professor at Rutgers University in the Department of Statistics from 1969-1971, followed by appointments as Assistant and Associate Professor at Bucknell University in the Department of Mathematics from 1971-1976 and 1979-1981, with Visiting Associate Professor appointments at The Pennsylvania State University in the Department of Statistics during 1977-1979 and 1981-1983. He joined the faculty in the Department of Statistics at Kansas State University in 1983 and was promoted to Full Professor in 1989.

Paul was an established researcher with a national and international reputation having contributed fundamental work in the area of estimation for stochastic processes. In particular, his research in quasi-likelihood estimation for semimartingales provided a framework for optimal parameter estimation for general processes, widely known as the Hutton-Nelson solution. In addition, he was known for his research on prediction of order statistics and nonparametric testing procedures, including those based on biased-size sampling and precedence probabilities. Paul’s competence as a strong researcher naturally led editors of many prominent journals of the discipline to seek his careful review of research manuscripts. Finally, Paul collaborated with researchers across campus, always with a critical approach to applied research through novel applications of his mathematical and statistical expertise.

His contributions as a teacher and researcher within the department were considerable as well. Known as an excellent and innovative teacher, Paul taught a wide variety of undergraduate and graduate level classes, including core courses in stochastic processes, multivariate analysis, sampling techniques and survival analysis. Notably, while at K-State, Paul served as major professor for nine PhD and thirty-eight MS students in Statistics, along with providing service as a committee member for many graduate students within and outside the department. He also provided continuous and consistent service on many departmental committees, including those which advanced the academic growth of the department through extensive curriculum improvement.

His colleagues in the department and across campus provided this citation to Paul in appreciation for his many accomplishments and his dedicated service to the Department of Statistics and Kansas State University.

 

Publications

Ling, Y., and P. I. Nelson. (2014) "Effect size for comparing two or more normal distributions based on maximal contrasts in outcomes." Statistical Methods and Applications 23(3): 381-399.

Hua, J. J., and P. I. Nelson. (2013) "A comparison of the performance of four confidence intervals for population size based on a capture–recapture design." Proceedings of Joint Statistical Meetings: 2448-2456.

Ling, Y., and P. I. Nelson. (2013) "Consistency of p-values obtained by averaging over nuisance parameters." Communications in Statistics-Theory and Methods 42(5): 852-866.

Liu, Y., P. I. Nelson, and S. S. Yang. (2012) "An omnibus lack of fit test in logistic regression with sparse data." Statistical Methods and Applications 21(4): 437-452.

Kang, Q., P. I. Nelson, and C. I. Vahl. (2010) "Parameter estimation from an outcome-dependent enriched sample using weighted likelihood method." Statistica Sinica: 1529-1550.

Kang, Q., and P. I. Nelson. (2009) "Permutation tests from biased samples for the equality of two distributions." Journal of Nonparametric Statistics 21(3): 305-319.

Kang, Q., and P. I. Nelson. (2008) “Nonparametric tests for the median from a size-biased sample.” Journal of Nonparametric Statistics 20(1): 19-37.

Nelson, P. I., and K. E. Kemp. (2003) “Testing for the Presence of a Maverick Judge.” Communications in Statistics-Theory and Methods 32(4): 807-826.

Xie, R. R., and P. I. Nelson. (2003) "Separation among distributions related by linear regression." The American Statistician 57(1): 33-36.

El Barmi, H., and P. I. Nelson. (2002) "A note on estimating a non-increasing density in the presence of selection bias." Journal of Statistical Planning and Inference 107(1): 353-364.

Fedde, M. R., P. I. Nelson, and W. D. Kuhlmann. (2002) "Ventilatory sensitivity to changes in inspired and arterial carbon dioxide partial pressures in the chicken." Poultry Science 81(6): 869-876.

Nelson, P.I., and K. E. Kemp. (2000) “Small sample set estimation of a baseline ranking.” Communication in Statistics- Theory and Methods 29(1): 19-43.

Kaminsky, K. S., and P. I. Nelson. (1998) "Prediction of order statistics." Handbook of statistics 17: 431-450.

Kemp, K. E., Yang, S. S., Perng, S. K., and P. I. Nelson. (1998) "An asymptotically distribution free test for assessing the separation between two distributions." Journal of Nonparametric Statistics 2(3): 235-248.

El Barmi, H., and P. I. Nelson. (1997) "Inference from stable distributions." Institute of Mathematical Statistics Lecture Notes - Monograph Series 1997: 439-456.

Nelson, P. I. (1997) "The New Statistical Analysis of Data." Journal of the American Statistical Association 92(438): 795.

Ogunyemi, O. T., and P. I. Nelson. (1997) "Prediction of gamma failure times." IEEE transactions on reliability 46(3): 400-405.

Ogunyemi, O. T., and P. I. Nelson. (1996) "Exact and adaptive prediction intervals for order statistics." Communications in Statistics-Simulation and Computation 25(4): 1057-1074.

Ogunyemi, O. T., Hutton, J. E., and P. I. Nelson. (1993). “Approximate Bayes estimators for stochastic processes.” Journal of Statistical Computation and Simulation 45(3-4): 219-231.

Hutton, J. E., Ogunyemi, O. T., and P. I. Nelson. (1991) "Simplified and twostage-quasi-likelihood estimators." Estimating Functions, Oxford Science Publications, Oxford: 169-187.

Perng, S. K., Kemp, K. E., and P. I. Nelson (1989). “Testing for a separation between two normal distributions.” Communications in Statistics-Theory and Methods 18(5): 1895-1912.

Nelson, P. I., and S. S. Yang. (1988) "Some properties of Kendall's partial rank correlation coefficient." Statistics & Probability Letters 6(3): 147-150.

Hutton, J. E., and P. I. Nelson. (1986) "Quasi-likelihood estimation for semimartingales." Stochastic Processes and their Applications 22(2): 245-257.

Isobe, T., Feigelson, E. D., and P. I. Nelson. (1986) "Statistical methods for astronomical data with upper limits. II-Correlation and regression." The Astrophysical Journal 306: 490-507.

Feigelson, E. D., and P. I. Nelson. (1985) "Statistical methods for astronomical data with upper limits. I-Univariate distributions." The Astrophysical Journal 293: 192-206.

Hutton, J. E., and P. I. Nelson. (1984) "Interchanging the order of differentiation and stochastic integration." Stochastic Processes and their Applications 18(2): 371-377.

Kaminsky, K. S., Luks, E. M., and P. I. Nelson. (1984) "Strategy, nontransitive dominance and the exponential distribution." Australian Journal of Statistics 26(2): 111-118.

Nelson, P. I. (1980) "A note on strong consistency of least squares estimators in regression models with martingale difference errors." The Annals of Statistics 8(5): 1057-1064.

Klimko, L. A., and P. I. Nelson. (1978) "On conditional least squares estimation for stochastic processes." The Annals of Statistics 6(3): 629-642.

Kaminsky, K. S., and P. I. Nelson. (1975) "Best linear unbiased prediction of order statistics in location and scale families." Journal of the American Statistical Association 70(349): 145-150.

Kaminsky, K. S., and P. I. Nelson. (1975) "Characterization of distributions by the form of predictors of order statistics." A Modern Course on Statistical Distributions in Scientific Work. Springer, Dordrecht, 113-115.

Kaminsky, K. S., Mann, N. R., and P. I. Nelson. (1975) "Best and simplified linear invariant prediction of order statistics in location and scale families." Biometrika 62(2): 525-527.

Kaminsky, K. S., and P. I. Nelson. (1974) "Prediction intervals for the exponential distribution using subsets of the data." Technometrics 16(1): 57-59.

Nelson, P. I. (1970) "A class of orthogonal series related to martingales." The Annals of Mathematical Statistics 41(5): 1684-1694.

 

Students advised by Dr. Paul Nelson

Ph.D. Graduates	Dissertation Title	Year
Xie, Lin	Statistical Inference For Rankings in the Presence of Panel Segmentation	2012
Dey, Rajarshi	Inference For the K-Sample Problem Based on Precedence Probabilities	2011
Ling, Yan	Inference for the Intrinsic Separation Among Distributions Which May Differ in Location and Scale	2009
Kang, Qing	Nonparametric Tests for a Size-Biased Sample	2005
Zhang, Ying	Parameter Estimation in Continuous and Discrete Time Queues Using Queue Length and Waiting Time Data	2001
Perera, Subashan	Autoregressive Time Series Models with Exponential Marginal Distributions	2000
McCarter, Kevin	Estimation and Prediction for the Birnbaum-saunders Distribution Using Type-ii Censored Samples, with a Comparison to the Inverse Gaussian Distribution	1999
Curriero, Frank C.	The Use of Non-euclidean Distances in Geostatistics	1996
Ogunyemi, Theophilus Olabode	Simplified, Two-stage Estimators and a Bayes Type Modification of Maximum Quasi-likelihood Estimators	1990

 

M.S. Graduates	Dissertation Title	Year
Jiao, Yuanfang	A Simulation Comparison of two Methods for Controlling the Experiment-wise Type 1 Error Rate of Correlated tests for Contrasts in One-way Completely Randomized Designs	2014
Cao, Yueping (Jennifer)	The Performance and Robustness of Confidence Intervals for the Median of a Symmetric Distribution Constucted Assuming Sampling from a Cauchy Distribution	2012
Fei, Mingwei	A Study of the Robustness of Cox's Proportional Hazards Model Used in Testing for Covariate Effects	2012
Hembree, David	The Robustness of Normal Theory Confidence Intervals for Effect Size	2012
Li, Xin	A Simulation Evaluation of Backward Elimination and Stepwise Variable Selection in Regression Analysis	2012
Makarova, Natalya	A Simulation Study of the Robustness of Prediction Intervals for an Independent Observation Obtained from a Random Sample from an Assumed Location-Scale Family of Distributions	2012
Hua, Jianjun	Confidence Intervals for Population Size Based on a Capture-Recapture Design	2011
Devamitta-Perera, Muditha	Robustness Of Normal Theory Inference When Random Effects Are Not Normally Distributed	2011
Serasinghe, Kumary	A Simulation Comparison of Parametric and Nonparametric Estimators of Quantiles from Right Censored Data	2010
Paranagama, Thilanka	A Simulation Study of the Robustness of the Least Median of Squares Estimator of Slope in a Regression Through the Origin Model	2010
Gayle, Suelen	A Simulation Study of the Size and Power of Cochran's Q VERSUS the standard chi-square test for Testing the Equality of Correlated Proportions	2010
Wu, Yun	A Simulation Study of the Robustness of Hotelling's T2 Test for the Mean of a Multivariate Distribution When Sampling from a Multivariate Skew-Normal Distribution	2009
Yang, Celeste	A Study of the Calibration-Inverse Prediction Problem in a Mixed Model Setting	2008
Yankovskyy, Yevhen	Application of a Gibbs Sampler to Estimating Parameters of a Hierarchical Normal Model with a Time Trend and Testing for Existence of the Global Warming	2008
Shrestha, Smriti	A Study of the Consequences of Ignoring Measurement Error on Inference for the Slope of a Linear Regression Model	2007
Wang, Yunxun	Simulation Study of Tests for Common Correlation Coefficient of Bivariate Normal Distributions	2006
Bi, Lieqi	A Class of Robust Tests for the Center of a Symmetric Distribution	2005
Ling, Yan	Estimating a Mean Using the Closest Two Out of Three Measurements	2005
Feng, Xiujuan	Comparing Three Methods of Testing for Independence	2003
Sun, Xin	Effects of Nonnormality on Confidence Intervals for the Intra Class Correlation Coefficient in One Way Random Effect Models	2003
Xie, Yali	Confidence Interval for a Small Binomial Proportion	2003
Kang, Qing	Expected Significance Levels and P-Values	2002
Xie, Rongrong	Testing for Separation among Normal Distributions Whose Means Are a Linear Function of a Predictor Variable	2002
Zhou, Xia	A Comparison of Asympotically Normal Test Statistics Based on Estimated and Hypothesized Variance Functions	2002
Chai, Juan	A Simulation Comparison of Least Squares and Maximum Likelihood Estimation for a Linear Regression Model When the Response Is Subject to Right Censorship	2001
Xiao, Bohong	The Linear Calibration Problem	2000
Zhang, Ying	Exam Option.	2000
Cai, Yaping	A Simulation Study of Tests of Randomness with Application to Meteorology	1997
Xiang, Hua (Helen)	A Simulation Study of the Robustness of the One Sample T-test with Respect to Heterogeneity of Scale	1997
Perera, Subashan	Estimating the Correlation Coefficient in the Presence of Homogeneous Censoring	1996
Cao, Guoxiang	Estimating Functions on Chaotic Dynamical Systems	1995
Hsu, Ling-Ling	A Simulation Study of Two Hypothesis Testing Problems for Markov Chains	1995
Hu, Yunqin	Bootstrap Tests for Equality of Scale Parameters for Nonnormal Distributions	1995
Shult, Jiang T.	A Comparison of Prediction Intervals for an Independent Future Observation	1995
Cheng, Hui-Jung	Statistics and the Law	1994
Peng, Xiaojun	Comparing Three Methods of Estimating Pr(x>y)	1994
Lu, Biao	Analysis of Repeated Measures with Gibbs Sampler	1993