Mavis B. Carroll

Mavis Bowler Carroll (October 12, 1917 – March 7, 2009)[1] was an American statistician who pioneered the industrial use of statistics in her work at General Foods.[2]

Carroll finished high school at age 16 and attended the New Jersey College for Women on a scholarship. She played on the school basketball team, and earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics there in 1938. She worked as a code breaker during World War II[1] and at the Squibb Institute for Medical Research in New Brunswick, New Jersey in the early 1950s.[3]

Later, she worked at the General Foods Research Center, where she became Section Head in 1958[4] and, by the 1960s, the head of their division of mathematical and statistical services.[5] Her work at General Foods included the design and analysis of taste tests, with each variation of a food product typically being tested by a panel of 50 tasters (evenly split by gender) who rated the foods on a scale of +3 to −3. In order to keep the total number of tasters manageable, a careful design of experiments was needed to control the number of different food variations to be tested.[6]

Carroll was secretary of the American Society for Testing and Materials for 1960 to 1962.[7] In 1971, Carroll was elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association.[8]

Carroll died of pneumonia on March 7, 2009, in Wilmington, North Carolina.[1]

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