A conversation with Joseph Waksberg

Abstract

Joseph Waksberg was born September 20, 1915, in Kielce, Poland; his family emigrated to the United States in 1921. Soon after graduating from the City University of New York CUNY in 1936, he moved to the Washington, D.C. area. He joined the Census Bureau in 1940, and stayed there for 33 years, retiring in 1973 as the Associate Director for Statistical Methods, Research, and Standards. Joe then joined Westat, a statistical research firm in suburban Maryland. He has continued to work at Westat for the last 26 years, serving as Chairman of the Board of Westat since 1990. From 1967 to 1997, he also served as a consultant to CBS and other TV networks for election night predic-tions. He has served the profession of statistics in many roles and received numerous awards, including the Department of Commerce Gold Medal and the Roger Herriot Memorial Award from the American Statistical Association. He has been active in the American Statistical Association serving on the Board of Directors as chairs of both the Survey Research Methods Section and the Social Statistics Section and on a number of committees. He has been president of the Washington Statistical Society and is currently an Associate Editor of Survey Methodology.