George Alex Whitmore

Title: 
Professor Emeritus, Operations Management
George Alex Whitmore
Degree(s): 

BSc University of Manitoba
MSc University of Minnesota
PhD University of Minnesota

Biography: 

G. A. (Alex) Whitmore joined the Faculty of Management of McGill University in 1969, following a previous appointment at the University of Saskatchewan. He was promoted to full professor in 1975 and, in recognition of his research accomplishments, awarded the Samuel Bronfman Chair in 1982. He was also an Associate Member of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at McGill until his retirement.

Professor Whitmore taught many graduate and undergraduate courses at McGill, as well as at academic institutions in China, Singapore, and Thailand. His courses included operations research, basic management statistics, regression analysis, multivariate data analysis, sample survey methods, decision analysis, and stochastic processes. He also taught courses in econometrics, insurance, corporate finance, investment management, capital markets, portfolio theory, and commercial banking. Over his career, Professor Whitmore supervised many graduate students and held a number of senior academic positions in the Faculty. He actively supported international projects and exchanges and served as academic director of multi-year international programs in China, Pakistan and Ukraine.

Professor Whitmore has published many research articles and chapters in edited research volumes, including several in Chinese-language publications. He is a co-author of several books. His research and consulting covers a wide range of mathematical and statistical applications in business, economics, health and engineering. His interests have focused extensively on risk management, reliability, failure processes, and survival analysis. Professor Whitmore has remained active in research and consulting since retiring. In addition to his McGill appointment, he is currently an Affiliate Investigator in the Clinical Epidemiology Program of the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute.

Group: 
Professor Emeritus
Selected publications: 

Papers in Peer-Reviewed Journals

Lee, M.-L. T. , Bulyk, M.L., Whitmore, G.A. and Church, G.M., "A statistical model for investigating binding probabilities of DNA nucleotide sequences using microarrays," Biometrics, 58, 2002, pp. 981-988.

Lee, M.-L. T. , W. Lu, G. A. Whitmore and Beier, D., "Models for microarray gene expression data," Journal of Biopharmaceutical Statistics, 12, 2002, pp. 1-19.

Lee, M.-L. T. and Whitmore, G.A.. "Power and sample size for microarray studies," Statistics in Medicine, 21, 2002, pp. 3543-3570.

Li, S., F. Liu, S. Liu and G.A. Whitmore, "Comparative performance of Chinese commercial banks: Analysis, findings and policy implications," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, 16, 2001, pp. 149-170. 

Meng, S., Yuan, W. and Whitmore, G.A. (1999) "Accounting for individual over-dispersion in a bonus-malus automobile insurance system," ASTIN Bulletin, v. 29, pp. 327-337.

Ting Lee, M.-L. and Whitmore, G.A. (1999) "Statistical inference for serial dilution assay data," Biometrics, v. 55, pp. 1215-1220.

G. A. Whitmore, M. J. Crowder and J. F. Lawless (1998). Failure inference from a marker process based on a bivariate Wiener model, Lifetime Data Analysis, 4, 229-251.

Whitmore, G.A. (Cole, B.F., Lee, M.-L.T. and Zaslavsky, A.M.) "An Empirical Bayes Model for Markov-Dependent Binary Sequences with Randomly Missing Observations", Journal of the American Statistical Association, 90, 1995, pp. 1364-1372. 

(Cole, B.F., Lee, M.-L.T. and Zaslavsky, A.M.) "An Empirical Bayes Model for Markov-Dependent Binary Sequences with Randomly Missing Observations", Journal of the American Statistical Association, 90, 1995, pp. 1364-1372. 

Whitmore, G.A., "Estimating Degradation by a Wiener Diffusion Process Subject to Measurement Error", Lifetime Data Analysis , 1, 1995, pp. 307-319. 

"Estimating Degradation by a Wiener Diffusion Process Subject to Measurement Error", Lifetime Data Analysis, 1, 1995, pp. 307-319. 

(Whitmore, G.A., Young, K.D.S., & Kimber, A.C.), "Two-stage reliability tests with technological evolution: A Bayesian analysis", Applied Statistics, v.43 (1994), pp. 295-307. 

Whitmore, G.A. (Cole, B.F., Lee, M.-L.T. and Zaslavsky, A.M.) "An Empirical Bayes Model for Markov-Dependent Binary Sequences with Randomly Missing Observations", Journal of the American Statistical Association, 90, 1995, pp. 1364-1372. 

(and Gentleman, J.F.), "Estimation of the Mutagenic Potency of Environmental Chemicals Using Short-Term Bioassay", (In case studies in data analysis with contributed analyses by Gerarda A. Darlington, by Brian J. Eastwood, and by Brian Leroux and Daniel Krewski), Canadian Journal of Statistics, v. 21 (1993), pp. 421-465. 

"Some Personal Perspectives on Statistics in China", Statistical Research, v. 6 (1993), pp. 8-12 (in Chinese). 

(and Lee, M.-L.T.), "Stochastic Processes Directed by Randomized Time", Journal of Applied Probability, v. 30 (1993), pp. 302-314. 

(and Lee, M.-L.T.), "A Multivariate Survival Distribution Generated by an Inverse Gaussian Mixture of Exponentials", Technometrics, v. 33 (1991), pp. 39-50. 

"Determining an Economic Design for Reliability Demonstration Tests", Economic Quality Control, v. 6, (1991), pp. 138-158. 

(and Gentleman, J.F.), "Estimation of the Need for Child Care in Canada", (in case studies in data analysis with contributed analyses by E. M. Gee and J. B. McDaniel and by C. A. Struthers), Canadian Journal of Statistics, v. 19 (1991), pp. 241-282. 

(Jorgensen, B., and Seshadri, V.), "On the Mixture of the Inverse Gaussian Distribution with Its Complementary Reciprocal", Scandinavian Journal of Statistics, v. 18 (1991), pp. 77-89. 

(Chown, M. and Pullum, G.G.), "Some Exact Algebraic Expressions for the Reliability of Multipath Switching Networks", Journal of Statistical Planning and Inference, v. 29 (1991), pp. 199-209. 

(and Gentleman, J.F.), "Beer Chemistry and Canadians' Beer Preferences", (in case studies in data analysis with contributed analyses by Jean-Pierre Carmichael, Gaétan Daigle and Louis-Paul Rivest, and by Bing Li and A. John Petkau), Canadian Journal of Statistics, v. 18 (1990), pp. 93-125. 

"On the Reliability of Stochastic Systems: A Comment", Statistics and Probability Letters, v. 10 (1990), pp. 65-67. 

(and Xekalaki, E.), "P-values as Measures of Predictive Validity", Biometrical Journal, v. 32 (1990), pp. 977-983. 

(Pullum, G.G. and Chown, M.), "Reliability Analysis of a Multipath Switching Network", Microelectronics and Reliability, v. 28 (1988), pp. 619-633. 

Books and Edited Volumes

(Neter, J., Wasserman, W. and Whitmore, G.A.) Applied Statistics, Allyn and Bacon, Inc., third edition, 1988, pp. 1006, Fourth edition, 1993, pp. 989. 

Chapters in Books

Lee, M.-L. T. and Whitmore, G.A., "A model relating quality of life to latent health status and survival," in Statistical Methods for Quality of Life Studies: Design, Measurements, and Analysis, M. Mesbah, B. F. Cole and M.-L. T. Lee (eds.), Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002, pp. 219-230. 

Whitmore, G.A. (J.F. Gentleman) eds., Case Studies in Data Analysis, Lecture Notes in Statistics, Springer-Verlag Inc., 1994, 262 pp. Contributed Chapters and Essays 

Whitmore, G.A., "Stochastic Dominance for the Class of Completely Monotonic Utility Functions^, in Studies in the Economics of Uncertainty: In Honor of Josef Hadar, Thomas B. Fomby and Tae Kun Seo, eds., New York, SpringerVerlag, 1989, pp. 7788. 

Conference Proceedings

Lee, M-L.T., Kuo, F.C., Whitmore, G.A. and Sklar, J. "Importance of microarray gene expression studies: Statistical methods and evidence from repetitive cDNA hybridizations", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, August 30, 2000, v. 97, no. 18, pp. 9834-9839.

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