Leland Wilkinson
Leland Wilkinson
Leland Wilkinson
was modeled after Wilkinson's 1999 book on statistical graphics, The Grammar of Graphics.[1] This book
also served as the foundation for the R package ggplot2,[8] the Python Bokeh package,[9] the R package
ggbio,[10] the Vega (https://vega.github.io/vega/) declarative language, and helped shape the Polaris project
at Stanford University.[11]
Wilkinson served as the vice president of statistics at Tableau Software, where he continued to work on
scientific visualization and statistical graphics.[12] In 2016, he became a chief scientist at H2O.ai to lead a
data visualization push;[13] he remained in that role until his death.[12]
Personal life
Wilkinson married Reverend Ruth Elaine VanDemark on June 23, 1967.[3] She died in 2012.[14] Together,
they were the parents of Amie Wilkinson, a professor of mathematics at University of Chicago, and
Caroline Wilkinson, a writer.[15] He later married Marilyn Vogel.[16]
Wilkinson died on December 10, 2021, at Northwestern Lake Forest Hospital, in Lake Forest, Illinois.[17]
Awards
Wilkinson became a Fellow of the American Statistical Association in 1998 and a Fellow of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science in 2009. He was an elected member of the International
Statistical Institute in 2006.[4] Wilkinson received the National Institute of Statistical Sciences Distinguished
Service Award in 2010.[4]
References
1. Leland Wilkinson, The Grammar of Graphics, Springer, 1999. ISBN 0-387-98774-6. at
Springer (https://www.springer.com/statistics/computational/book/978-0-387-24544-7)
2. Wilkinson, Leland; Wills, Graham; Wills, D.; Dubbs, R.; Norton, A. (2006). The Grammar of
Graphics (https://books.google.com/books?id=NRyGnjeNKJIC&pg=PA98). p. 98.
3. "Ruth VanDemark becomes a bride" (https://www.nytimes.com/1967/06/24/archives/ruth-van
demark-becomes-a-bride.html). The New York Times. June 24, 1967. Retrieved
December 14, 2021.
4. "Leland Wilkinson" (https://web.archive.org/web/20061110113526/http://www.spss.com/rese
arch/wilkinson/Publications/wilkinsonvita.pdf) (PDF). SPSS. 2005. Archived from the
original (http://www.spss.com/research/wilkinson/Publications/wilkinsonvita.pdf) (PDF) on
November 10, 2006. Retrieved December 14, 2021.
5. Osborne, Jason W. (2013). Best Practices in Data Cleaning (https://books.google.com/book
s?id=-5-9GDCQPHoC&pg=PA13). p. 13.
6. Jarrett, Jeffrey (1992). "SYSTAT/SYGRAPH and Micro-TSP". Statistics and Computing. 2
(4): 231–236. doi:10.1007/BF01889683 (https://doi.org/10.1007%2FBF01889683).
S2CID 119499841 (https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:119499841).
7. Jones, Lacey; Symanzik, Jürgen. "Statistical Visualization of Environmental Data on the
Web Using nViZn" (https://web.archive.org/web/20111005214627/http://www.galaxy.gmu.ed
u/interface/I01/I2001Proceedings/LJones/LJones.pdf) (PDF). Archived from the original (htt
p://www.galaxy.gmu.edu/interface/I01/I2001Proceedings/LJones/LJones.pdf) (PDF) on
October 5, 2011.
8. "ggplot2: Create Elegant Data Visualisations Using the Grammar of Graphics" (https://cran.r-
project.org/web/packages/ggplot2/index.html). CRAN (R programming language). June 25,
2021. Retrieved December 14, 2021.
9. "Bokeh" (https://github.com/ContinuumIO/Bokeh). GitHub. Retrieved July 17, 2013.
10. Lawrence, Michael (2012). "ggbio: an R package for extending the grammar of graphics for
genomic data" (https://web.archive.org/web/20160128172357/http://genomebiology.com/201
2/13/8/R77). Genome Biology. 13 (8): R77. doi:10.1186/gb-2012-13-8-r77 (https://doi.org/10.
1186%2Fgb-2012-13-8-r77). PMC 4053745 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC
4053745). PMID 22937822 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22937822). Archived from the
original (http://genomebiology.com/2012/13/8/R77) on January 28, 2016. Retrieved July 17,
2013.
11. "Polaris, interactive database visualization" (http://www.graphics.stanford.edu/projects/polari
s/). Stanford University. Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20211021043340/http://graphi
cs.stanford.edu/projects/polaris/) from the original on October 21, 2021. Retrieved
December 14, 2021.
12. "VP, STATISTICS | Leland Wilkinson" (https://research.tableau.com/user/leland-wilkinson).
research.tableau.com. Tableau Research. Retrieved December 14, 2021. "His research
focused on scientific visualization and statistical graphics. He later moved on to be the Chief
Scientist at H2O.ai, working on machine learning algorithms and visualization methods for
big data until his passing on December 10, 2021."
13. Zakrzewski, Cat (April 20, 2016). "Machine Learning Co. H2O.ai Hires Leland Wilkinson to
Lead Data Visualization Drive" (https://www.wsj.com/articles/machine-learning-co-h2o-ai-hir
es-leland-wilkinson-to-lead-data-visualization-drive-1461159049). The Wall Street Journal.
Retrieved December 14, 2021.
14. "Rev. Ruth E. Van Demark 1944–2012" (https://www.isba.org/barnews/2012/07/19/rev-ruth-e
-van-demark-1944-2012). Illinois State Bar Association. July 19, 2012. Retrieved
December 14, 2021.
15. "Ruth E. VanDemark (1944–2012) – Obituary" (https://www.michalikfuneralhome.com/obitua
ry/1504186). michalikfuneralhome.com. 2012. Retrieved December 14, 2021.
16. Hauser, Alisa (February 10, 2014). "Victorian Mansion on Wicker Park's Beer Baron's Row
Sells for $2.3 Million" (https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20140210/wicker-park/victorian-ma
nsion-on-wicker-parks-beer-barons-row-sells-for-23-million/). DNAinfo. Retrieved
December 14, 2021.
17. "Leland Wilkinson, creator of The Grammar of Graphics, passed away" (https://flowingdata.c
om/2021/12/13/leland-wilkinson-creator-of-the-grammar-of-graphics-passed-away/).
FlowingData. December 13, 2021. Retrieved December 14, 2021.
External links
Leland Wilkinson's academic home page (http://www.cs.uic.edu/~wilkinson/)