
ABOUT THE CONFERENCE
The conference was first held under the auspices of the Planning And Statistics Division of the War Production Board at Princeton University in December 1945, with one of the participants being Dr. W. Edwards Deming. The War Board held another meeting in December 1946. Then the conference was renamed the Princeton Conference and held annually at Princeton University.
The Metropolitan Section of the ASA first sponsored it. In the early fifties, sponsorship was transferred to its present sponsor, the Metropolitan Section of the ASQ. In 1971, the Biopharmaceutical Section of the ASA and in 1979 the Statistics Division of the ASA assumed cosponsorship.
For the first 25 years, members of the Statistics Department of Princeton University were heavily involved in its organization, in particular, Professor J. Stuart Hunter. In 1970, its chair was assumed by Walter R. Young who has held it ever since. Before, Mr. Young assumed the chairmanship, the conference started after lunch on Friday and ended after lunch on Saturday
The conference then steadily grew in attendance and length. Book sales and tutorials based on recently published texts started in 1976. The conference had a peak attendance of 476 in 1977 and assumed its present all tutorial and 2 two-day short course format in 1979. In 1979, due to its size, the conference was transferred to Villanova University for one year and then held at Newark Airport for five years. It was moved to its current site in Atlantic City in 1985.
Dr. Deming spoke at the conference on a numerous occasions. In 1980, the conference established the Deming Medal, which was awarded at the conference to outstanding statisticians and quality control practitioners for the next 17 years. The awarding of the medal was then transferred to the ASQ. Dr Deming gave the conference’s keynote address in 13 of these years. He died immediately after the conference in 1993. The conference was named in his honor the following year.
Prof. Stuart Hunter was invited as a keynote speaker at the 68th (2012) Deming Conference. He gave an excellent talk about the history of the Deming Conference. His presentation slides are available here. Walter Young wrote an excellent article about the conference history, Some Non-statistical Reminiscences of My 45 Years of Chairing the Deming Conference.
For a list of speakers and committee members at the past Deming Conferences, click here
Since then, the conference then steadily grew in attendance and length. The current purpose of the 3-day Deming Conference on Applied Statistics is to provide a learning experience on recent developments in statistical methodologies in biopharmaceutical applications. The 76th Annual Deming Conference will be held virtually on December 7-15, 2020. There will be two parallel half-day tutorial sessions based on recently published books for the first three days for a total of 12 tutorial sessions (December 7-9). Then the conference will continue with a 2-day short courses on December 10 and 11 and another on December 14 and 15. (Thus, one could conceivably register for both short courses.) The books used for the tutorial sessions and for the short courses as well as books written by invited speakers will be sold at appreciable discounted prices by mail. Posters will also be presented virtually. A complete program pdf file is available for download. Attendees will receive downloadable program proceedings of the presentations.
We must apologize for waiting this long for our committee to make the decision to go virtual. We could have held the conference at the Tropicana. As can be seen on www.tropicana.net they have a Comprehensive Safety Plan and assured us that all of the sanitizing and social distancing standards would be met to their utmost. New Jersey is improving although they are making travelers from high-risk states quarantine. We had plans to provide all participants daily with washable masks with the Deming logo. We also seriously considered postponing the conference until April as we did in the ancient past of 2001. However, in the end we did what we felt to be the safest option and to make the conference virtual.
There will be virtual poster presentations. To submit a poster, please contact Dr. Pinggao Zhang, Deming Poster Chair, at pinggao.zhang@takeda.com.
There will be student scholar presentations. Selected scholars can attend the 3-day conference without paying a registration fee. For a student scholar application, please contact Dr. Sofia Paul, Deming Scholar Chair, at sofia.x.paul@gsk.com.
For more information about the conference, please email Dr. Din Chen, Deming Publicity Chair, at din@demingconference.org or visit www.demingconference.org.