My husband, David Dawkins, who has died aged 59 of liver and kidney failure, was a talented statistician who worked in market research.
David was born in Fulham, south-west London, the youngest of six children of Walter, a wages clerk, and Alice, and was the only one of his siblings to go to university. With a scholarship to go to Westminster school, he opted instead for St Clement Danes grammar school, from where he went to read economics at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He achieved a distinction in his master’s in social statistics from Southampton University and was nominated for a fellowship of the Royal Statistical Society in 1979.
He pioneered the use of the statistical technique of log linear analysis in sociology and, with his brother-in-law Roger Penn, applied it to the historical analysis of the role of intermarriage in class mobility. First published in the journal Sociology in 1983, their work was republished in 2013 as one of 80 seminal articles in social statistics in the Sage Benchmarks in Social Research Methods series.
David began work in market research with Demotab and then joined AGB. In 1984 he formed his own company, Probit Research, which provided statistical analysis and computer programming. He translated the ideas from Jean Paul Benzecri’s 1976 book L’analyse des Données into Correspondence Analysis, his first major software product. David became the leading independent expert in the UK on conjoint analysis – used to determine how people value the different attributes that make up an individual product or service – and was one of only a few statisticians in the UK using simulated test market modelling to determine the viability of new products.
His work was in many ways path-breaking. For instance, his research for Nokia led them to develop their highly successful 3310 mobile phone. His knowledge of statistics and applications was phenomenal, and he had an amazing ability to simplify maths and translate information to non-statisticians. He was highly skilled in chess and cryptic crosswords.
A lifelong Fulham fan, David went to both their FA cup final against West Ham in 1975 and the Uefa Europa League final against Atlético Madrid in Hamburg in 2010. He was well known for his genial character, and his love of the absurd and ridiculous, as well as his zany sense of humour.
He is survived and much missed by myself, our children, Christopher and Catherine; and by his siblings, Rita, Rosemary, Ray, Jeff and Don.
