Frank Yates

Frank Yates was an English statistician who spent most of his career at Rothamsted Experimental Station, the agricultural research institute where he worked alongside Ronald Fisher and later succeeded him as head of statistics. Yates made major contributions to the theory and practice of experimental design, developing methods including the balanced incomplete block design for arranging treatments when not every treatment can be compared under every block, and advancing the theory of analysis of variance that Fisher had pioneered. Yates's algorithm, a fast method for computing the effects in a factorial experiment, became a standard computational technique in the field. Yates was also an early champion of statistical computing, arranging for Rothamsted to acquire one of the first electronic computers used for statistical work, an Elliott 401, in 1954, and he later served as president of the British Computer Society from 1960 to 1961. He received the Royal Statistical Society's Guy Medal in Gold in 1960 and the Royal Society's Royal Medal in 1966.