My friend Robert Adams, who has died aged 76, spent most of his working life as a researcher and statistician for examination boards. However, his colleagues will remember him as much for his wit, sociability, wide reading and intellectual curiosity as for his undoubted expertise in statistical analysis.
Born in Nuneaton in Warwickshire, Bob was the middle of the three sons of Geoffrey Adams, a quantity surveyor, and Winifred (nee Eling), a housewife. He attended King Edward VI grammar school in the town, then took a mathematics degree at Woolwich Polytechnic (later Thames Polytechnic and now University of Greenwich) in south-east London, followed by a postgraduate diploma in statistics in 1968 at the University of Kent. There he met Pat Birks, and they married in 1970.
