A gleaning for my colleagues from Sunday's New York Times. This is the entire article. Gordon Bear School of Science Ramapo College Mahwah NJ 07430-1680 USA ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Voice: 201 684-7754 Fax: 201 684-7637 E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Leslie Kish, 90; Improved Science of Surveys October 14, 2000 By ERIC PACE Leslie Kish, an authority on scientific population sampling who predicted President Harry S. Truman's upset victory over Thomas E. Dewey in 1948, died on Oct. 7 in a hospital in Ann Arbor, Mich. He was 90 and lived in Ann Arbor. Professor Kish and the influence of his teachings "fundamentally changed how the world collects information about itself," said Robert M. Groves, a professor of survey methodology at the Universities of Michigan and Maryland, and a former student of Professor Kish, who taught at the University of Michigan. Professor Kish developed sampling methods that are employed now in censuses as well as in political surveys and polls. The basic task of sampling is to draw a representative sample from a universe of possible observations. "He took a set of theoretical developments in statistics that occurred in the late 1930's and translated them to applications in hundreds of social science research projects throughout the world," Professor Groves said. Another former student, Martin R. Frankel, a professor of statistics and computer information systems at Baruch College of the City University of New York, said Professor Kish had found applications for the new ideas in statistics "in fields where surveys were emerging as a way of looking at things." As examples he mentioned economic behavior surveys and a study of the use of health insurance. In the 1930's most pollsters used quota sampling, in which interviewers are asked to find and question certain numbers of people who match various profiles. But a small group of American statisticians was beginning to use probability sampling, in which interviewees are chosen by a random process outside the interviewer's control. By the 1940's there was debate on which method should become the standard. Professor Kish was instrumental in getting probability sampling recognized, at Michigan and elsewhere, as the type of sampling to be used in surveys involving human behavior. The value of the probability sampling methods that Professor Kish worked out was shown in the 1948 presidential election. He and colleagues at Michigan carried out a probability sample of fewer than 1,000 American households. At the time, news media and commercial polls were saying that Dewey would win easily. But the Michigan sample indicated that Truman was slightly ahead. Truman won. Probability sampling is now the accepted method of scientific sampling. Professor Kish was also an early advocate of rolling samples. That is, the repeated use of separate sample surveys a different sample each time at regular intervals, that cumulate into very large studies. That technique is is just beginning to be used in the United States. In addition, Professor Kish wrote "Survey Sampling" (1965, Wiley), which is still in print and widely used. He was on the Michigan faculty from 1951 until his formal retirement, as a professor of sociology, in 1981. He was a co-founder in 1947 of the Institute for Social Research at the university. Professor Kish was born in Poprad in what is now Slovakia. He came to the United States with his family in 1926, settled in the Bronx and went on to receive a bachelor's degree from the City College of New York and a master's degree and his doctorate, both from Michigan. In 1937 he joined the International Brigade to fight Franco in the Spanish Civil War. He saw action in a Hungarian battalion was wounded and returned to the United States in 1939. He is survived by his wife, the former Rhea Kuleske; two daughters, Carla Kish of Silver Spring, Md., and Andrea Kish of St. Paul; and a sister, Magda Bondy of White Plains. Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company ================================================================= Instructions for joining and leaving this list and remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES are available at http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ =================================================================