The formation of the Department of Statistics was endorsed on October 26, 1978 by the Ad Hoc Committee on Applied Mathematics, chaired by Associate Dean William Richardson of Public Health and Community Medicine. The Planning Committee on Statistics was formed on January 24, 1979. The committee was chaired by Arts and Sciences Associate Dean Paul Hodge; its members were Hubert Blalock (Sociology), Ben King (Business School), Cliff Lunneborg (Psychology), Donovan Thompson (Biostatistics), Doug Chapman (Fisheries), and Ron Pyke and Galen Shorack (Mathematics). Their mandate was to prepare a plan whereby the College of Arts and Sciences could best create a Department of Statistics that would benefit the students of the University, the statistics faculty in the various colleges, and the general reputation of the University in the field of Statistics, building on the already outstanding programs in Biostatistics and Mathematics.
Following their recommendation, the Department of Statistics was created on July 13, 1979 under the chairmanship of Professor Michael D. Perlman , who was recruited from the University of Chicago. The initial Department members were Perlman, Pyke, Shorack, and Piet Groeneboom (Visiting) with R. Douglas Martin (Electrical Engineering), Lunneborg (Psychology), and Peter Guttorp (Berkeley joining one year later, followed by Paul D. Sampson the next year.