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5An unorthodox journey to statistics:Equity issues, remarks on multiplicityJuliet Popper ShafferDepartment of StatisticsUniversity of California, Berkeley, CAThe progression to my statistics career was anomalous, and not to be recommendedto anyone interested initially in statistics. A fuller account of myearlier studies, as well as information on my childhood, can be found in aninterview I gave to Robinson (2005) as former Editor of the Journal of Educational(now Educational and Behavioral) Statistics (JEBS). It is availablefor download on JSTOR and probably through many academic libraries.In this paper I will recount briefly some pre-statistical career choices, describea rather unorthodox way of becoming a statistician, introduce my majorarea, multiplicity, and note briefly some of my work in it, and make some generalremarks about issues in multiplicity. I’ll discuss the more technical issueswithout assuming any background in the subject. Except for a few recent papers,references will be only to some basic literature on the issues and not tothe recent, often voluminous literature.5.1 Pre-statistical career choicesAt about 14 years of age I read a remarkably inspiring book, “MicrobeHunters,” by Paul de Kruif (1926), and decided immediately to be a scientist.Since then, several other scientists have noted a similar experience withthat book.In addition to an interest in science, mathematics was always attractiveto me. However, I thought of it wrongly as something very remote from thereal world, like doing crossword puzzles, and wanted to be more engaged withthat world.My high school courses included a year each of beginning biology, chemistry,and physics. I wanted to take the four years of mathematics available,49