WNAR, Then and Now
Biology, Statistics, and Mathematics ...
What could these sciences possibly have in common?

The combination -- biology, statistics, and mathematics -- appeared to be so interesting and so unique to some people that they called it biometrics . Exactly what were people doing that would require these three sciences? We're not certain there was any one incident that precipitated the formation of this unique science. But we do know that biologists, at least as far back as the 19th century, had questions about what they had observed in their studies, and they saw that one of the best ways to answer those questions required the use of some statistical and mathematical tools. The biologists worked in agriculture, medicine, pure and applied biology, and in their laboratories and in the field. They had questions about genetics, biological assays, plant and animal ecology, clinical trials, methods of field and laboratory experimentation, biological surveys, measurement techniques, and on and on. So many questions and so few answers!

By 1945 in the United States, so many `biometricians' were working on these problems that they started a scientific journal called The Biometric Bulletin just so they could share the results of their investigations into the applications of statistics and mathematics to biology. The field was growing so rapidly that in September of 1947 they decided, along with their colleagues from around the world, to start a Biometric Society that was international and would take over responsibility for the publication of their journal, under the new name Biometrics . The official membership of this new organization was 888 in the first public release of membership numbers in 1948. Hey! That's a lot of biometricians! Must be something to this science if so many people are interested in it. The Society continued to grow and had 6,500 members by 1996. In that year it also started publishing the Journal of Agricultural, Biological, and Environmental Statistics to share results from these areas of research.

The International Biometric Society is now composed of Regions and smaller units called Groups. The Western North American Region (WNAR) was founded in Berkeley, California, in June of 1948 with 73 members. We still meet every year someplace in our region, which includes the western-most 13 U.S. states and 3 Canadian provinces. Our meeting is typically attended by 200 of about 450 current members and is held in the summertime on a college campus to take advantage of inexpensive dormitory housing. The meeting is jointly sponsored by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS), and the two societies divide the profits/losses according to members' attendance. WNAR and IMS organizers of this meeting are all volunteers, despite that it requires a lot of time and effort. To date we have chosen to keep the registration fee low rather than hire professional conference organizers.

Oh yes, before we forget! We still keep up our international contacts, through International Biometric Conferences held in even-numbered years and always in summery weather. Recently we've met in New Zealand (December 1992), Canada (July 1994), and Amsterdam (July 1996), and the next two IBCs will be held in Cape Town (December 1998) and the San Francisco Bay Area (July 2000).

At biometric meetings we talk about our most recent research on such things as how to estimate the survival rates in clinical trials, or sample streams for environmental monitoring, or design experiments for agricultural studies, or determine the population sizes of wildlife, and so on. Whatever your interests in statistics or mathematics as related to biology, you're bound to find something of interest to you.

Come join us!

Contributed by Bob Kuehl, 1996