Roger Purves
June 20, 1935 - January 13, 2023
Services will be held February 25th, 11 am to 1pm at Chapel of the Chimes, Oakland.
Roger Purves’s heart failed while on a walk near his Berkeley home. He had been ill for 3 years with complications resulting from prostate cancer radiation treatments.
He was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, went to high school in Victoria (he hung out with the ‘bad kids’) and college at the University of British Columbia. Though not an actor he joined the Player’s Club — for the scene— where he discovered Caroline, his beloved wife of 65 years. He earned a bachelor’s degree in math, in a class of three. Smart as he was, the other two were math super stars, which made him always self-doubting —for instance, that his dissertation at U.C. Berkeley, on game theory, was original; it was, and well received!
After obtaining his Phd in Probability and Statistics Roger joined the faculty in 1965 and taught Stat 2 for many years— a large intro course. He was known for his ability to explain complexities in direct language. Although his academic work was in probability, he was motivated to write an approachable textbook —featuring New Yorker cartoons!— because he believed that statistical data, with its power to steer public policy, should be demystified. Statistics (with co-authors D. Freedman and B. Pisani) is still used around the world.
There were two intermissions in Caroline and Roger’s Berkeley story. From 1963 to 65, he taught at Imperial College in London, and, in 1980 they moved, now with two children in tow, to Lantzville, B.C. for seven years. But once they’d found their wonderful house in the Uplands, Roger was loathe to leave it—he invoked Kant who never went more than a mile outside his town. London and New York did lure him away regularly because of the lifelong friends he’d made there; he also treasured his and Caroline’s visits to his brother-in-law when he was stationed as Canadian Ambassador in West Africa and Malaysia.
Roger was a gentle and loving father, as openminded and innovative in his child-rearing as he was in his teaching; the parent with whom his childrens’ friends always enjoyed speaking.
He had a lifelong interest in computers, steered by his conviction that the end user should be the design priority. He participated in the Homebrew Computing Club in Menlo Park in the 70s, assembled a Kim-1, bought the first Mac when it came out, and railed against Apple’s deprecation of the Finder. He was learning the functional language Elm until his health kept him from attending the San Francisco Meet-Ups.
While Roger watched his hopes for technology crash on the rocks of ugly internet interfaces he took solace IRL pleasures: Dream Fluff doughnuts, Cole Coffee, Nick’s pizza, the Warriors winning streaks and the Chronicle fetched daily from Star Grocery. He loved movies —only in theatres! —and Shakespeare. His list of greats included Jean Luc Goddard, James Brown, Bach, Samuel Becket, Jane Austen, the Spaghetti Westerns and Stinson Beach.
Roger is survived by his wife Caroline, his children Conan and Miranda, his grandchildren Woolf, Eland and Ramona, his sister Vicki Harrison, as well as his brothers in law Mike Harrison and John Bell, sister-in-law Robin Pacific, daughter-in-law Bernice Ma and son-in-law Adam Brebner.
We miss you.