Robert E. O'Conner

In the fall of 1967 Professor Blalock was revising his textbook, so decided to teach the introductory statistics course for social science graduate students at the University of North Carolina. As a new graduate student, I had to take the course and expected the material to be boring, yet important for me to learn to become a competent social scientist. I was right about the importance and wrong about the interest level. The book - and his classes - inspired me by demonstrating that statistical methods could enable scholars to do research that can serve as a basis for social action and public policy decisions. The overarching message of Blalock's book and his teaching was that applying sophisticated methods to trivial problems is a poor choice of effort. I concluded that applying scientific social science methods to important societal concerns would be a worthwhile way to build a scholarly career and have been happiest when following this guidance.