Talk:Michael Woodroofe

Although I have a COI, I've attempted to write a neutral article, and have solicited feedback from his colleagues and former students. Notability is obviously achieved under Criterion 5 and 8 of academic notability, and I believe also under 1 and 3. Russ Woodroofe (talk) 09:56, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

Death
Michael Woodroofe (my dad) died last week. I've added a death notice from the University of Michigan statistics department, and done some other minor cleanup. (An IP editor had already added the death date in the infobox.) I think that there was little judgement required in how to add the bare death facts, so I did so myself. I may also add some references (e.g., book reviews) over the next few days as per WP:COIU. On the other hand: I'm expecting some more substantial obituaries and memorials to follow over the next months. Expanding the article from these will require judgement, and I will certainly not try to do this myself; I'll list references here instead. Russ Woodroofe (talk) 04:21, 3 March 2022 (UTC)


 * My condolences. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 11:46, 2 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Very sorry for your loss. I'll try to help with this as needed. Qflib, aka KeeYou Flib (talk) 18:59, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

October 2023 suggested edits
, thank you sincerely for offering to help; thank you also to any other page-watchers who may want to look at the below. It's taken me some time to get to making a request, partly because I was waiting for his memorial conference. I made a couple of edits that I believe to be noncontroversial (reordering references, adding reviews of his books) myself, but am avoiding anything that involves any significant judgement. I have the following additional suggestions:

Small style changes:
 * The reference "Michael_Woodroofe_Formal_Obituary.pdf" would be better as


 * I should point out that I wrote this obit (in consultation with other family and with his colleagues).


 * I think that a paragraph-formatted "Awards and honors" section is generally preferred over the bullet-point list.

Probably straightforward:
 * Perhaps "distinguished" should be walked down to "successful" in the sentence about his graduate students. (Or perhaps there is something better to do there; to be clear, I'm suggesting a little more restraint.)
 * I'd suggest removing the "Remembering Michael Woodroofe" source as redundant with the University Record source, and replacing with his obituary published by the IMS:


 * Full issue at . This obit looks to also otherwise be a useful source.


 * For completeness, and to record sources, other obituaries include: American Statistical Association, but this is pretty brief.  The American Mathematical Society's is also very brief .  An obit also appeared in the East Oregonian; I didn't quickly find a link and don't think this one adds so much anyway.
 * It'd be worthwhile to make clearer in the article that "Recent developments in nonparametric inference and probability" is a Festschrift for the birthday conference.
 * A memorial conference was held in his honor September 29-30 of this year (2023). Probably can cite to the conference webpage:


 * (I don't believe that a Festschrift is planned.)


 * It would be worthwhile to add that he became an elected member of the International Statistical Institute in 1992. The year of election is given in  (unfortunately, this list requires some navigating); that he was an elected member is stated in the "Michael Woodroofe Lecture Series" source, also in the preface to the Festschrift "Recent developments in nonparametric inference and probability", or in the brief AmStat obit previously mentioned.
 * It might or might not be worthwhile to mention that he was the chair of the Department of Statistics from 1977 through 1983, sourced to the IMS obit.
 * It seems worthwhile to expand "Woodroofe died on February 22, 2022, at the age of 81" to something like "Woodroofe died on February 22, 2022, at the age of 81 after a period of ill health" or "Woodroofe died on February 22, 2022, at the age of 81 after a struggle with dementia" or similar.
 * The IMS obit discusses his research in a reliable, non-primary source. It would be good to add that obit as a source at the end of the paragraph beginning "Woodroofe was particularly noted for his work ..."  It would be possible to develop a better paragraph based on the IMS obit and/or the (longer version of the) University Record obit.  As a COI editor, non-statistician, etc, I should take a particularly light hand here.

Question:
 * Would it be worthwhile to add an image to the article? I think that the author of the poster for the memorial conference (similar to what is near the top of the conference webpage)  would be willing to put a medium-resolution version on commons.  Perhaps something like this would be appropriate to have next to or slightly below "Awards and honors"?

Sorry to write a small book here! I think that most of the suggested changes are straightforward. I could implement much of this myself, if a non-COIed editor gives the ok; or I could use the edit request template if you are busy. Thank you again! Russ Woodroofe (talk) 10:49, 30 October 2023 (UTC)