Joseph Michael Hilbe (December 30, 1944 – March 12, 2017) was an American statistician and philosopher, founding President of the International Astrostatistics Association[2] (IAA) and one of the most prolific authors of books on statistical modeling in the early twenty-first century.
Hilbe was also a two-time national champion track & field athlete,[10] a US team and NCAA Division 1 head coach, and Olympic Games official.
Hilbe studied for his doctorate in philosophy at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) where he was a graduate reader for visiting professor and Nobel Laureate Friedrich Hayek and personal assistant to Rudolf Carnap, one of the founders of the Vienna Circle of Logical Positivism.
[13] Hilbe served as the founding editor of the Stata Technical Bulletin (predecessor to the Stata Journal) from 1991 to 1993,[14] for which he developed a variety of statistical software commands, including the first generalized linear model (GLM) program having a negative binomial regression family (1993).
[15] Hilbe served in several corporate positions during the 1990s,[16] including the positions of lead statistician for Genentech's National Registry for Myocardial Infarctions (NRMI-2;1996–97)[17] and lead statistician for Hoffman-La Roche's Canadian National Registry for Cardiovascular Disease (FASTRAK;1997–99).
In December 2009, the ISI Council approved the creation of an astrostatistics committee and network with Hilbe as inaugural chair.
In August 2012 the International Astrostatistics Association (IAA) was formed, with Hilbe elected as its founding President.
Its goal is to enhance collaboration between astrophysists, statisticians, and computer-information scientists, with an aim of enabling researchers to better understand and interpret astronomical data.
Hilbe was also on the scientific organizing committee of the first IAU symposium on astrostatistics, Statistical Challenges in 21st Century Cosmology, held in May 2013 in Lisbon.
Hilbe was elected to serve as a U.S. team coach and manager during the 1980s for several major competitions in the U.S., Australia/New Zealand, the Caribbean, and in Europe.