Robert L. Winkler

Brief Biography

Robert L. Winkler is a decision scientist and recipient of the Frank P. Ramsey Medal. Winkler earned his bachelors degree in mathematics at the University of Illinois prior to joining the statistics program at the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business. As a grad student, he taught courses at the University of Illinois Chicago. He wrote his dissertation on the assessment of prior distributions in Bayesian analysis, receiving his PhD in 1966. Winkler shortly after joined the Graduate School of Business at the Indiana University, becoming a full Professor in the Department of Quantitative Business Analysis in 1972.

Winkler held visiting appointments at the University of Washington, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria, and INSEAD, the Business School of the World, prior to becoming IBM Research Professor at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke. In 1988, he accepted a joint position with Duke’s Institute of Statistics and Decision Sciences, concurrently holding a research position at the university’s Center for Health Policy Research and Education.

Winkler’s research has largely focused on Bayesian analysis in decision-making and probability forecasting. In 1972, he publishedAn Introduction to Bayesian Inference and Decision. The book is meant to lay a foundation in the concepts of Bayesian decision, enabling readers to understand the results of analyses by providing tools to model real-world problems.

A dedicated member of the professional decision analysis and publications community, Winkler has heled a number of societal positions. In the early 1980s, he served as Vice President for Publications of The Institute of Management Sciences (TIMS). Towards the end of his tenure, he chaired the TIMS/Operations Research Society of America Combined Publications Committee. Among his numerous editorial positions, Winkler has served as Departmental Editor for Decision Analysis of Management Science (1981-1989) and Associate Editor of Decision Sciences (1976-1984),the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis (1969-1983), the Journal of the American Statistical Association (1970-1986), and Management Science (1979-198, 1999-2014). He is a four time recipient of the later publication’s Distinguished Service Award. In the early 1990s, he chaired Decision Analysis Society (DAS).  

Winkler received the Frank P. Ramsey Medal of DAS for his continued and distinguished contributions to the field of decision analysis. In 1992, his Management Science article “Unanimity and compromise among probability forecasters,” coauthored with University of Oregon Assistant Professor Robert T. Clemen, won the Decision Analysis Publication Award.  In the paper, Clemen and Winkler examine a variety of Bayesian consensus models with respect to their conformance to the unanimity principle. In 2009, another of his papers was named a finalist in the same competition. Winkler was elected a Fellow of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences in recognition of his dedicated service and growth to the research and knowledge of decision analysis.

Other Biographies

Duke University Fuqua School of Business. Faculty: Robert L. Winkler Biography. Accessed June 3, 2015. (link)