ABS&Comment: Genest, Probability and statistics

[Gretchen Whitney]

"Probability and statistics: A tale of two worlds?" Christian  Genest at the
Universite Laval, Dept Math & Stat., St. Foy, PQ G1K 7P4, Canada
email: genest at mat.ulaval.ca
CANADIAN JOURNAL OF STATISTICS 27:(2) 421-444 June 1999

THE AUTHOR CITES NINE REFERENCES INCLUDING an earlier key paper by Steven
M Stigler. and Derek deSolla Price "Little Science, Big Science" 1963, but
mistakenly treats his middle name as his last name. The safest way to cite
Price is DJD Price for Derek John deSolla Price.

This comparative study of research productivity and publication habits in
probability and statistics completed the author's previous  paper

( C. Genest, "Statistics on Statistics: measuring research productivity by
journal publications between 1985 and 1995, Canad. J. Statistics
25:441-57(1997).

The study is based on a ten year survey of eighteen international
journals, half of which are specialized in probability theory and the
other half in statistics. Paper, author and adjusted page counts yield
cursory measures of productivity for countries and institutions that
contributed to fundamental research in these two related fields during the
period 1986-95. These data also reveal significant cultural differences
between probabilists and statisticians in the volume of research, the
length of papers, coauthorship practices,etc. Canada is seen to be one of
the strongest contributors to the development of these two disciplines.

The paper is full of interesting tables with many surprises in the
rankings. For example, Israel and The Netherlands are the top two
countries for probability based on GNP per capita. On the other hand
Canada and Australia ranked tops for statistics using the variable
pages/pop. The University of Paris VI is the top institution for
publication output in probability while Stanford is tops for statistics.
The University of Delaware is the most productive in probability and
statistics irrespective of size (table 12). In table 15 Cornell Univ..is
reported to have the most prolific researchers . The authors point out
that they have not made an attempt to evaluate quality through citation
analysis.

Eugene Garfield, PhD.
Chairman Emeritus, ISI http://www.isinet.com
Publisher, The Scientist http://www.the-scientist.com
email garfield at codex.cis.upenn.edu
tel 215-243-2205
fax 215-387-1266
home page http://www.the-scientist.library.upenn.edu/eugene_garfield