In Memoriam: Professor William Hoyle Hannum

William “Bill” Hoyle Hannum, retired professor of statistics and decision sciences at Syracuse University’s Whitman School, died July 11, 2022. He fought a courageous battle with Parkinson’s disease for 12 years and was just a month shy of his 90th  birthday. 

Hannum graduated from Mercersburg Academy, the College of Wooster and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he earned his doctorate in statistics and economics. As a professor at the Whitman School of over 30 years, he was known especially for his generous ability to make difficult subject matter accessible to first-year MBA students. Spending countless office hours tutoring and encouraging his students – he told them that “stats can help you make better decisions, if you use them correctly.”