Niels Keiding

Niels Keiding
Niels Keiding (right) in conversation with Arjen Doelman, 2017
Born(1944-05-14)14 May 1944
Copenhagen
Died3 March 2022(2022-03-03) (aged 77)
NationalityDanish
Alma materUniversity of Copenhagen
Known forBiostatistics
Epidemiology
Scientific career
FieldsStatistics
InstitutionsUniversity of Copenhagen

Niels Keiding (14 May 1944 – 3 March 2022[1]) was a Danish biostatistician.

Biography

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Education

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Keiding studied at the University of Copenhagen, graduating with a cand.stat. degree (roughly equivalent to a Master's degree in other countries) under supervisor Anders Hald in 1968.[1]

Teaching and professional experience

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At the University of Copenhagen, Keiding successively held assistant, associate and, from 1984, full professor positions, the latter in the section of Biostatistics within the Faculty of Health Sciences. In 1971 he was one of the founders of the Danish Society of Theoretical Statistics [dk] (DSTS), serving as its secretary from 1971–1975. The Scandinavian Journal of Statistics was founded in 1974, with DSTS being one of its four societal board members.[2] He was head of the Biostatistics section until three years prior to retirement. In 2014 he became Professor emeritus at the section. [1]

Research and development

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Keiding's research spanned several fields. In demography, he published on nonparametric inference for the Lexis diagram.[3] With coauthors he contributed to event history analysis, including to models where only partial information is available. He applied the latter to time-to-pregnancy (TTP), which is the timespan from the start of when a couple tries to become pregnant until they succeed.[4] In a survey with coauthors, he clarified how survival analysis is used to analyze TTP.[5]

His book, Statistical models based on counting processes, written jointly with Per Kragh Andersen, Ørnulf Borgan, and Richard D. Gill, has been cited extensively in the medical literature[6] and been lauded for its "lucid" exposition of theoretical and practical aspects. Its survey of statistical models based on counting processes has been called "thorough".[7]

Keiding co-authored an influential meta-analysis, known as Carlsen study after the name of the first author, that showed a significant decline in human sperm count and volume from 1938 to 1990.[8][9]

He also wrote about the history of the use of martingales in survival analysis (with coauthors),[10] and of demography,[11] in particular age-period-cohort analysis in the 19th century.[12]

Work for international scientific organisations

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Keiding served as treasurer of the Bernoulli Society for Mathematical Statistics and Probability (1981–1987), chairman of the board of the Scandinavian Journal of Statistics (1988–1991), and president (1992–1993) of the Biometric Society.[13] He was a member of the Research Section Committee of the Royal Statistical Society (1999–2003), and member of council and several ad hoc committees in the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS) and the International Statistical Institute (ISI). He was president-elect of the ISI in 2003–2005,[14] and president in 2005–2007.[1]

Selected works

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Books

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  • Kragh Andersen, Per; Borgan, Ørnulf; Gill, Richard D; Keiding, Niels (2012). Statistical models based on counting processes. Springer Science & Business Media. ISBN 978-1-4612-4348-9.

Articles

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  • E Carlsen, A Giwercman, N Keiding, NE Skakkebæk, Evidence for decreasing quality of semen during past 50 years. British Medical Journal 305 (6854), 609-613 (1992)
  • J Toppari, JC Larsen, P Christiansen, A Giwercman, P Grandjean, et al., Male reproductive health and environmental xenoestrogens. Environmental Health Perspectives 104 (suppl 4), 741-803 (1996)
  • WHO Expert Committee on Leprosy: Seventh Report. WHO Expert Committee on Leprosy, World Health Organization (1998)
  • PK Andersen, N Keiding, Multi-state models for event history analysis. Statistical Methods in Medical Research 11 (2), 91-115 (2002)

Honours and awards

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His honours and awards include:

References

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  1. ^ a b c d Kragh Andersen, Per (2022). "Obituary: Niels Keiding". Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A. 185 (3): 1456–1457. doi:10.1111/rssa.12850. S2CID 248093578.
  2. ^ Board of the Foundation of the Scandinavian Journal of Statistics
  3. ^ Keiding, Niels (1990). "Statistical inference in the Lexis diagram". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A. 332 (1627): 487–509. Bibcode:1990RSPTA.332..487K. doi:10.1098/rsta.1990.0128. S2CID 122677661.
  4. ^ Kragh Andersen, Per; Keiding, Niels (2002). "Multi-state models for event history analysis". Statistical Methods in Medical Research. 11 (2): 91–115. doi:10.1191/0962280202SM276ra. PMID 12040698. S2CID 2726913.
  5. ^ Keiding, Niels; Højbjerg Hansen, Oluf K.; Nørbo Sørensen, Ditte; Slama, Rémy (2012). "The current duration approach to estimating time to pregnancy". Scandinavian Journal of Statistics. 39 (2): 185–204. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9469.2012.00798.x. S2CID 33370189.
  6. ^ Meira-Machado, Luís; de Uña-Álvarez, Jacobo; Cadarso-Suárez, Carmen; Kragh Andersen, Per (2009). "Multi-state models for the analysis of time-to-event data". Statistical Methods in Medical Research. 18 (2): 195–222. doi:10.1177/0962280208092301. PMC 2692556. PMID 18562394.
  7. ^ Valkeila, Esko (n.d.). Review of "Statistical models based on counting processes". Springer Ser. Stat. Springer. ISBN 9780387978727. Retrieved 24 January 2023. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
  8. ^ Scutti, Susan (25 July 2017). "Sperm counts of Western men plummeting, analysis finds". CNN. Retrieved 20 January 2023.
  9. ^ Carlsen, Elizabeth; Giwercman, Alexander; Keiding, Niels; Skakkebaek, Niels E. (12 September 1992). "Evidence for decreasing quality of semen during past 50 years". BMJ (Clinical Research Ed.). 305 (6854): 609–613. doi:10.1136/bmj.305.6854.609. ISSN 0959-8138. PMC 1883354. PMID 1393072.
  10. ^ Aalen, Odd O.; Kragh Andersen, Per; Borgan, Ørnulf; Gill, Richard D.; Keiding, Niels (2022). "Martingales in Survival Analysis". In Mazliak, Laurent; Shafer, Glenn (eds.). The Splendors and Miseries of Martingales. Trends in the History of Science. Cham: Springer. pp. 295–320. arXiv:1003.0188. doi:10.1007/978-3-031-05988-9_13. ISBN 978-3-031-05987-2. S2CID 5060138.
  11. ^ Keiding, Niels (1987). "The method of expected number of deaths, 1786-1886-1986". International Statistical Review. 55 (1): 1–20. doi:10.2307/1403267. JSTOR 1403267. PMID 12179583.
  12. ^ Fosse, Ethan; Winship, Christopher (2019). "Analyzing Age-Period-Cohort data: a review and critique" (PDF). Annual Review of Sociology. 45: 467–492. doi:10.1146/annurev-soc-073018-022616. S2CID 182417675.
  13. ^ "XVIth International Biometric Conference on" (PDF). Statistical Society of Australia Newsletter. 31 March 1993. ISSN 0314-6820.
  14. ^ Keiding, Niels (2004). "Roles of statistics in the life sciences". International Statistical Review. 73 (2): 255–258. doi:10.1111/j.1751-5823.2005.tb00288.x. JSTOR 25472665. S2CID 120170693.
  15. ^ "Utenlandske medlemmer". Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters (in Norwegian). Archived from the original on 15 July 2007. Retrieved 1 September 2024.
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