Derek John Pike, 1944–2018

Derek Pike died in Reading on March 20th, 2018. He had a distinguished career as a teacher and consulting biometrician in both Britain and overseas. Derek was born in Sidcup in 1944. Sadly his mother died when he was only 8 years old. He was brought up by his father, grandmother and an aunt and uncle. At that age of eight he won a scholarship to Eltham College. Derek enjoyed his time at school, excelling at cricket, rugby, athletics and cross-country running. He continued to play cricket for many years. In 1963 he went to read mathematics at Edinburgh University where he made many lifelong friends and met his future wife, Joan. In 1966 Derek became the first student on the newly established Master of Science course in biometry in the Department of Applied Statistics at Reading University. He stayed at Reading, first as a research student and then from 1968 as a lecturer and finally as a senior lecturer in Applied Statistics. In 1977 Derek was awarded his doctorate, supervised by Roger Mead, on the evaluation of different experimental designs in estimating the parameters of inverse polynomials. Derek spent 1977–1978 in Canada as a Visiting Fellow at the University of Waterloo. Derek was an outstanding teacher. In particular, he was responsible for many years for teaching a course on ‘Statistics for agriculture’ to a class of 250 students made up undergraduate and postgraduate students from variouse departments. He used a variety of computer simulation games and data from the students’ own experiments to illustrate the usefulness of well-designed experiments and the appropriate statistical analyses. Many of the students attending this course were from overseas and his teaching influenced future agricultural research in many countries. Derek's one publication in the Royal Statistical Society's journals was in The Statistician in 1976 on ‘Statistical games as teaching aids’ (at that time a publication of the Institute of Statisticians before the merger). The Department of Applied Statistics ran a statistical advisory service for staff and students at the University. Derek was so successful at understanding their needs and providing help that there were always queues for advice on the days when he was on the rota! Derek published important work on the design of computer experiments to investigate the likely effects of a large number of control variables on the probability of a reaction in a nuclear reactor. With Tony Woods, Derek published a much referenced paper on the nuclear materials accountancy that was used to verify the holdings of nuclear materials by nation states. This involved investigating the correlation structure that is inherent in a series of reported material balances. Important work on using DNA data to check whether an allegedly new variety of maize was actually new rather than a variety produced earlier by another company was unfortunately not published because of commercial confidentiality. Derek left the University in 1989 to work as Head of Statistics for Imperial Chemical Industries (later Zeneca) Seeds, which provided further opportunities for travel; Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada and Thailand. He remained at Zeneca until 1999, when he set up a private consultancy service. Through a contact with a former Reading doctoral student Derek started a 12-year link with Indonesia, working on statistical and computing aspects of agronomic and bioscience development of high quality seed for oil palm and cocoa. In 2001 he returned to the University as Head of the School of Applied Statistics, retiring from the University in 2004. Derek's contributions to the Royal Statistical Society included serving on the Quality Improvement Committee and the Reading Local Group committee. He was an Associate Editor of Applied Statistics (1991–1995). However, his main contributions to the Society were as a member of the Professional Affairs Committee including a spell as Chair from 2001 to 2003. He was appointed as the first Chair (2000–2003) of the Continuing Professional Development Working Party and energetically drove the early discussions that led to the introduction of the Society's continuing professronal development policy. A little later, he was closely involved in developing the Society's mentoring service; he became widely known as a thoughtful and caring mentor. He was a member of Council (2000–2004) and a Vice-President of the Society (2001–2003). He was a Council member of the International Biometric Society (1995–1997). Outside work, Joan and Derek shared a love of travelling, walking and music. They were members of the University Choir for many years and were members of a madrigal group, initially led by Roger Mead, that still meets. Derek and Joan were very active members of Wesley Methodist Church in Reading where they were the Church's Traidcraft representatives. Following a Traidcraft visit to Ghana, they set up a link with a small cocoa-producing village, for whom the church raised money for clean water and sanitation. In summary, Derek cared passionately about other people and used his many skills to translate this caring into very practical help and support for all he met. Derek is survived by Joan, their daughter Anna, son Andrew and by Anna's son Ryan.

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