Interview with Professor Stewart Fotheringham, Director of Centre for GeoInformatics, University of St Andrews
How did you become interested in statistics?
I don’t recall any ‘Eureka-type’ moment when I suddenly thought – “This is it!”. I was always interested in ‘science-based’ subjects at school, especially mathematics but I just couldn’t get interested in springs, levers etc that constituted Applied Mathematics when I took A levels. There was, unfortunately, no sign of statistics in our curriculum. It therefore must have been at university and I do recall a few statistics being taught during my BSc at Aberdeen University during Geography practicals (I still have the handbook from 1st year practical classes!). There were no statistics taught in my other classes – Botany, Chemistry, Geology and Soil Science – so it must have been geography that stimulated me. However, my main learning curve in statistics definitely occurred when I went to McMaster University in Canada to do a Masters and PhD and the courses there were very quantitative with a strong dose of statistical methods in many areas.
What was your first job on leaving university?
As with some of your other interviewees, I’ve never left university having undertaking three degrees and then moved straight into lecturing. However, when I completed my PhD at McMaster, I had two job offers, both in the US: one was as an Assistant Professor in Geography at Indiana University; the other was as a researcher at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. The latter paid more but had only two weeks holiday and Oak Ridge was in a dry county (i.e. did not allow alcohol to be sold!) so really there wasn’t much of a choice! I’ve never regretted the choice as I moved fairly quikly to be an associate Professor at the University of Florida and then a Full Professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo before returning to the UK.
What is your current role?
I have just been appointed as Professor of Human Geography in the School of Geography and Geosciences at the University of St Andrews where I am establishing a Centre for GeoInformatics. Prior to that I was for seven years the Director of the National centre for Geocomputation at the National university of Ireland Maynooth in Ireland and before that I was Professor of Quantitative Geography at the University of Newcastle. My current job is by far the best I’ve had and St Andrews is a great place to work!
Who or what has inspired you in your career?
There is one ‘what’ and three ‘whos’. The ‘what’ is the environment in which I grew up which was at the time an inferno-like collection of steel mills and chemical plants around the south bank of the river Tees in North Yorkshire. Everyone I knew when I was growing up had a connection to either British Steel or ICI and almost everyone came home from work dirty. I had five summers of this in British Steel and was determined not to make this my life’s work. This was the biggest impetus to my academic career that I can think of.
The three ‘whos’ are quite different. The first is someone I can’t remember the name of but lived near me on a council estate in Eston. He was a couple of years ahead of me at junior school and I still remember at assembly when it was announced he had passed the 11-plus exam and made it to grammar school – I thought this was a fantastic achievement and it really motivated me to follow his example which led eventually to the opportunity to go to university. Once there I was motivated to stay in academia by one lecturer at Aberdeen University who drove a red sports car. I thought this was ‘cool’ and a sign that academics did not have to wear jumpers with holes in them and mismatched socks – you could be an academic and enjoy life. I think this is something we don’t show to our students nearly enough. The third ‘who’ was my supervisor at McMaster University, Mike Webber, who as a very hard-core quantitative researcher drilled some rather scary looking mathematics into me but who also showed me that a successful department is one where people work hard and play hard – a philosophy in which I still believe.
What would you say is your greatest achievement during your career?
I view universities as knowledge factories but producing new knowledge is notoriously difficult and not everyone is fortunate enough to manage it. I think I have a made a contribution both in terms of the mathematical modelling of spatial movements where I developed a new set of models based on theories of cognitive science and also in terms of the development of Geographically Weighted Regression, the subject of a workshop I ran for AQMeN. The latter seems to have been well received in a wide variety of areas outside geography which is very flattering. I’m also proud of founding the National Centre for Geocomputation in Ireland which grew from 4 to 40 people in seven years. I’m hoping to do something similar at St Andrews with the new Centre for GeoInformatics.
What is your vision for the future of statistics in Scotland?
I don’t have enough experience in Scotland to have a knowledgeable view yet but I see statistics in general as being a critical subject that everyone in schools and universities should be taught. The ideas of uncertainty and probability are central to just about everything – we all need to realise we might be wrong about something. The world, not just Scotland, would be a far better place if we didn’t take absolutist and deterministic views on things and recognised uncertainties.
What do you think are the main benefits of AQMeN?
Again, I don’t have much knowledge of AQMeN given my recent arrival in Scotland but I think what it is doing in bringing together people from different disciplines to learn about techniques they have in common and to share research experiences is fantastic. I have given workshops in the US for the Centre for Spatially Integrated Social Sciences at the University of California Santa Barbara which has a similar brief and the experience was terrific. AQMeN is a great idea and we are fortunate to have it established here in Scotland.
