She went to the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign for graduate study, earning a master's degree and her Ph.D.
[2] Her 1969 dissertation, supervised by Joseph L. Doob, was Some Aspects of Optimal Stopping Theory.
[1] Thompson is the author of Theory of Sample Surveys (Chapman & Hall, 1997).
[4] Thompson was elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association in 1985,[5] and of the Royal Society of Canada in 2006.
[2] The Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies gave her their Elizabeth L. Scott Award in 2010 "for outstanding contributions in research, teaching, and service that have served to inspire women statisticians; for encouraging women at all levels to seek careers in statistics; for excellence in graduate student supervision and mentorship; and for her leadership to minimize gender-based inequalities in employment.