I visited NC State very briefly during World War II. I was a private in the army and I attended a class on the calculus taught by R. L Anderson. On returning to NC State after the war as an EE undergrad student, I took a stat course under “Andy” at the newly established Institute of Statistics. Later, I took a job in their computing lab, and later still decided that I could work on my own PhD, instead of everyone else’s!

2. You also worked as staff statisticians at American Cyanamid Co. What are your memories when you look back on working there?

I was hired by Cyanamid in 1954. I remember frequently visiting the laboratories and manufacturing plants for “Uncle Cy’ as an in-house consultant on experimental design. Frank Wilcoxen was another Cyanamid statistician with a similar job. The company was very good to me and permitted me to lecture on design of experiments for many different professional groups outside Cyanamid.

3. You have also taught at many institutions over the years and you were also a member of the Mathematics Research Center at the University of Wisconsin before joining Princeton as an associate professor of chemical engineering and later professor of engineering. Over the years, how did the teaching of engineering evolve and adapt to meet the changing needs of students?

Almost all university statistics courses in the 1960’s and 1970’s emphasized the mathematics of the subject. I tried a more applied approach, with simple regression, design of experiments, and with emphasis on the arithmetic, not the math. The objective was to get the students to use the tools. The text by Box, Hunter and Hunter illustrates the approach.

4. How did your teaching and research motivate and influence each other? Did you get research ideas from engineering and incorporate them into your teaching?

The use of an empirical model to illustrate locally the often complex dynamic engineering and physical situation relating a response to many factors was a surprise to many engineers. .. and often generated many new ideas and in sights.

5. You have taught many who have gone onto make their own important contributions towards statistics. The late Professor Dennis Lindley told me that “One of the joys of life is teaching a really good graduate.” Would you be in agreement?

I more enjoyed getting an undergraduate excited and enthused about statistics, getting them to think about the many possibilities and career choices.

6. What advice would you offer to today’s students who hope to work in engineering?

Theory is important. Mathematics is important. Learning to deal with data, its generation and analysis is important too if you want to work in engineering.

Once an experimental design has been chosen, get every member of the team to estimate the value of the response for each experiment, including those planned for replication. It’s a wonderful learning experience.

7. You have remained at Princeton for many years. What is it about the university that you love and what has made you stay?

It’s a wonderful university complete with lots of great students, a versatile and cordial faculty and a beautiful campus.

8. You are best known for your innovative work on industrial applications of statistics, the fractional factorial, and response surface experimental design. Which for you has been the most enjoyable that you worked on, through which you had the most sense of achievement?

Fractional factorials and response surface design are all part of the exercise of learning from data. Their configurations are beautifully symmetric, extensions to high dimensions of the regular and semi regular figures. After a while you can almost see in k dimensions! The designs are exploratory and provide linear local approximations to a complex world.

9. What are your interests today? Are you working on anything currently or has a new field of interest sparked your interest that you follow?

I have to admit that at the age of 92.5, my greatest concern is getting up tomorrow morning in time for aqua-aerobics! I do keep an eye on the literature but keep falling farther and farther behind.

10. You have received numerous awards from the ASQ’s Brumbaugh Award in 1959 and 1985 and Shewhart Medal in 1970. He also received the Ellis Ott Award in 1978 and the Metropolitan Section’s Deming Medal in 1986. In addition, you are a recipient of the U.S. Army’s S.S. Wilks Medal. The Environometrics Society established the J. Stuart Hunter Annual Lecture in your honour. Is there a particular award that you were most proud of being awarded?

I was pleased to be elected to the National Academy of Engineering and to be President of the American Statistical Association. My most recent honour, and one that gave me great joy, was the Willian G. Hunter award.

11. You have authored many publications including Statistics for Experimenters with George E.P. Box and W.G. Hunter. What brought about this book in the first place and what are your memories of the writing process with Box and Hunter?

I first became acquainted with Bill when he was an undergraduate at Princeton and I helped to introduce him to statistics. He later went to Wisconsin to work with George Box, and later joined George and me in writing Statistics for Experimenters. The book was started by George at Princeton and he asked me to lend a hand. We made great progress at first. Later I accompanied George to Wisconsin but was soon compelled to leave (a family problem). Happily Bill proceeded to help out and the book was finally published.

12. You are also the author of the textbooks Design of Experiments and Statistics for Problem Solving and Decision Making designed for use in conjunction with a television series. What are the articles or books that you are most proud of?

I’m also a co-author of the text Introductory Engineering Statistics with Guttman, Wilks and Hunter published by Wiley. Planning and performing the 32 half-hour TV lectures for Westinghouse Learning and writing the associated Q&A booklets that accompanied each lecture were a big investment of time…and from my perspective a highpoint of my teaching-publication career.

13. You have experienced first-hand so much of the history of applied statistics and experimental design in particular – are there any particular stories that you would like to share with the up-and-coming statisticians of this world?

Once an experimental design has been chosen, get every member of the team to estimate the value of the response for each experiment, including those planned for replication. It’s a wonderful learning experience. But keep things confidential. No sense in embarrassing the boss when the actual data arrives.

14. You were the Founding Editor of Technometrics. What led you to launch the journal and what makes Technometrics different from other journals within the field?

There was a need for a journal that was similar to Biometrics but devoted to the engineering-industrial world and this was often discussed at the Gordon Conferences in the late 1950’s . My short courses for the Chemical Division of the ASQC had produced a handsome treasury and a new journal seemed a wonderful investment. Lots of folk participated. I believe Technometrics to be the leader in its field, although it is getting as bit more mathematical than I like.

15. What has been the best book on statistics that you have ever read?

I grew up with Cochran and Cox’s Experimental Design published by Wiley 1950. To this day it is one of my favourites.

16. What has been the most exciting development that you have worked on in statistics during your career?

Adapting Box’s ARIMA time series models to industrial experimentation and control.

In the near future I anticipate a rapid development of experimental designs for fitting time dependent univariate and multivariate dynamic models, i.e. designs for fitting differential equations.

17. What is it that you unfailingly love about working in the field of statistics? What drives you?

I love to teach and enjoy turning folks on to the beauty of design of experiments and the search for a signal in the noise.

18. What do you think the most important recent developments in the field have been? What do you think will be the most exciting and productive areas of research in statistics during the next few years?

Over the past decade or so, the computer has changed the practice of design of experiments with its quick ability to analyze and study the influences of modifying single, or very small blocks, of experiments. In the near future I anticipate a rapid development of experimental designs for fitting time dependent univariate and multivariate dynamic models, i.e. designs for fitting differential equations.

19. Do you think over the years too much research has focussed on less important areas of statistics? Should the gap between research and applications get reduced? How so and by whom?

Certainly the gap between research and applications could stand some reduction. You shouldn’t need a PhD in math to be an active useful (read ‘applied’) statistician. Most math-stat papers could use, nay need, more expository data and analysis.

20. What do you see as the greatest challenges facing the profession of statisticians in the coming years?

Big data, data collected as history, in networks, data collected with many alternative measurements, data collected as photographs and pictures. As always, trying to find the signals in the noise.

21. Are there people or events that have been influential in your career? Also, given that you are one of the most well respected statisticians of your generation and many statisticians look up to you, whose work do you admire (it can be someone working now, or someone whose work you admired greatly earlier on in your career?).

George Box was THE influence in my career and in my early days at Princeton I had the opportunity to teach courses with Sam Wilks and run errands for John Tukey. Another piece of early good fortune was Miss Cox’s hiring me full time to help run the IBM computing facility at the Institute of Statistics. Today I much admire the work of Bradley Jones of SAS-JMP employing the power of the computer to the creation of unique experimental designs.

22. If you had not got involved in the field of statistics, what do you think you would have done? (Is there another field that you could have seen yourself making an impact on?)

In 1940, as a senior in high school, I won the title of New Jersey’s “All-State” debater and imagined a career in law or maybe politics…a long way from becoming a statistician.