Skip to main content

Robert L. Winkler

James B. Duke Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Business Administration
Fuqua School of Business
Box 90120, Durham, NC 27708-0120
Fuqua Sch of Bus, Durham, NC 27708

Overview


Robert L. Winkler is James B. Duke Professor in the Fuqua School of Business, Duke University and also holds an appointment in the Department of Statistical Science at Duke. He is a member of the decision sciences area at Fuqua, and he served as Senior Associate Dean for Faculty and Research from 1991 through 1997. Professor Winkler received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. Prior to joining the Duke faculty in 1984, he was Distinguished Professor of Quantitative Business Analysis at Indiana University, and he has held visiting positions at the University of Washington, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (Laxenburg, Austria), Stanford University, and several times at INSEAD (Fontainebleau, France and Singapore).

Professor Winkler’s primary research areas include decision analysis, risk analysis, statistics, and forecasting. He has published more than 200 articles and several books, and has received support from the National Science Foundation and other sources. He was awarded the Frank P. Ramsey Medal for significant contributions to decision analysis and he has also been a recipient of the NCNB Faculty Award in the Fuqua School of Business. His research focuses on probability forecasting, the combination of forecasts, decision modeling, and Bayesian statistical models for inference and decision. He has held a number of editorial positions and has been an officer in several professional organizations.

Professor Winkler has taught courses in statistics and decision analysis in Fuqua’s MBA and EMBA programs. He taught the statistical models course in Fuqua’s Global Executive MBA Program from the program’s inception in 1996 until 2010, and he was the recipient of the Distinguished Teaching Award from the first GEMBA class. He also teaches a Ph.D. course in Bayesian inference and decision.

Current Appointments & Affiliations


James B. Duke Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Business Administration · 2024 - Present Fuqua School of Business
Professor Emeritus of Business Administration · 2024 - Present Fuqua School of Business
Professor of Statistical Science · 2007 - Present Statistical Science, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences

Recent Publications


Multivariate Almost Stochastic Dominance: Transfer Characterizations and Sufficient Conditions Under Dependence Uncertainty

Journal Article Operations Research · March 1, 2025 Most often, important decisions involve several unknown attributes. This produces a double challenge in the sense that both assessing the individual multiattribute preferences and assessing the joint distribution of the attributes can be extremely hard. To ... Full text Cite

Normativity, Epistemic Rationality, and Noisy Statistical Evidence

Journal Article British Journal for the Philosophy of Science · March 1, 2024 Many philosophers have argued that statistical evidence regarding group characteristics (particularly stereotypical ones) can create normative conflicts between the requirements of epistemic rationality and our moral obligations to each other. In a recent ... Full text Cite

The M5 uncertainty competition: Results, findings and conclusions

Journal Article International Journal of Forecasting · October 1, 2022 This paper describes the M5 “Uncertainty” competition, the second of two parallel challenges of the latest M competition, aiming to advance the theory and practice of forecasting. The particular objective of the M5 “Uncertainty” competition was to accurate ... Full text Cite
View All Publications

Recent Grants


Evaluation of Probability Forecasts

ResearchPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by National Science Foundation · 1999 - 2002

Minority Business Consulting Program

ResearchPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by Small Business Administration · 1996 - 2001

Collaborative Research on Dependence Assessment for Risk and Decision Analysis

ResearchPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by National Science Foundation · 1995 - 1997

View All Grants

Education, Training & Certifications


The University of Chicago · 1966 Ph.D.