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Reminiscences of a Statistician

The Company I Kept

  • Book
  • © 2008

Overview

Authors:
  1. E. L. Lehmann

    1. University of California, Berkeley, USA

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  • Professor Lehmann recalls the many remarkable statisticians and mathematicians he has known

  • The first account of the history of statistics from the Fisher revolution to the computer revolution

  • The stress is on ideas and technical material is held to a minimum

  • Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

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Table of contents (15 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xii
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  2. Mathematical Preparation

    • E. L. Lehmann
    Pages 1-16

  3. Becoming a Statistician

    • E. L. Lehmann
    Pages 17-41

  4. Early Collaborators

    • E. L. Lehmann
    Pages 42-56

  5. Mathematical Statistics at Other Universities

    • E. L. Lehmann
    Pages 57-78

  6. The Annals

    • E. L. Lehmann
    Pages 79-89

  7. The Berkeley Statistics Department I: Establishment and First Generation

    • E. L. Lehmann
    Pages 90-124

  8. The Berkeley Statistics Department II: The Second Generation

    • E. L. Lehmann
    Pages 125-134

  9. The Stanford Statistics Department

    • E. L. Lehmann
    Pages 135-142

  10. Nonparametrics and Robustness

    • E. L. Lehmann
    Pages 143-159

  11. Foundations I: The Frequentist Approach

    • E. L. Lehmann
    Pages 160-177

  12. Foundations II: Bayesianism and Data Analysis

    • E. L. Lehmann
    Pages 178-198

  13. Statistics Comes of Age

    • E. L. Lehmann
    Pages 199-210

  14. New Tasks and Relationships

    • E. L. Lehmann
    Pages 211-228

  15. England

    • E. L. Lehmann
    Pages 229-247

  16. Contacts Abroad

    • E. L. Lehmann
    Pages 248-268

  17. Back Matter

    Pages 269-309
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Keywords

About this book

It has been my good fortune to meet and get to know many remarkable people, mostly statisticians and mathematicians, and to derive much pleasure and benefit from these contacts. They were teachers, colleagues and students, and the following pages sketch their careers and our interactions. Also included are a few persons with whom I had little or no direct contact but whose ideas had a decisive influence on my work. To provide some coherence, the account is largely chronological and follows the steps of my own career. Taken together, these sketches provide a very personal picture of the dev- opment of statistical theory from the 1930s to the 1970s. It is the period between two revolutions: that of Fisher, Neyman, and Pearson, which laid the foundations for the classical statistical theory of that period; and the second revolution, forty years later, brought about by the advent of the computer, which turned statistics in new directions. The present account of this history is a highly selective one, which emphasizes the persons, institutions, and statistical topics that were close to my interests. One narrowing effect of this perspective stems from the fact that my career took place in the United States. As a consequence, the book focuses on American statisticians and institutions. Only the last two ch- ters discuss, briefly and very incompletely, developments in some other countries.

Reviews

From the Reviews:

"Reminiscences contains stories of people, their lives, their quirks and their science - told with gentle kindness and deep understanding of both the people and their science. It is a wonderful book and I urge everyone with an interest in people, in the development of 20th century science, or in statistics to buy, read and cherish it." (Howard Wainer, Journal of Educational Measurement, Summer 2009, Vol. 46, No. 2))

"This book is a gem, a must-read. It is a throughly enjoyable mixture of autobiographical and broader historical material, presented as mini-biographies of over 60 mathematicians and statisticians connected to the author....The book contains many anecdotes relating to what we might call career development, implicity emphasizing the role of chance in life. It contains much of interest on academic research, administration, teaching, the writing of papers and textbooks, collaboration, advising, and most prominently, friendship."  (Terry Speed, Short Book Reviews)

"The book is, in part, autobiographical. It also provides biographical vignettes of the people Lehmann has known and associated with since his arrival at Berkeley in 1941. … This is the first book that provides insights into the personalities and progress of statistical work of this period … . Currently, the book is a very interesting read with much insight. In the longer term, I predict that it will be a valuable source for historians of the future wanting to write about this period." (David Bellhouse, Mathematical Reviews, Issue 2008 k)

“This is an excellent book that can be recommended to anyone with an interest in statistics, the history of statistics, the history of science, and the philosophy of science. It is a personal story of the development of the statistical thinking that today dominates so much of the way we learn about the world, written by one of the main architects of this statistical thinking. … Lehmann gives a detailed exposition of the development of the testing of statistical hypotheses.” (Kjell Doksum, Technometrics, Vol. 51 (4), November, 2009)

Authors and Affiliations

  • University of California, Berkeley, USA

    E. L. Lehmann

About the author

Erich L. Lehmann is Professor Emeritus of Statistics at the University of California at Berkeley. He is a member of the American and National Academies, a former Editor of the Annals of Mathematical Statistics, and President of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics. He holds honorary degrees from the Universities of Chicago and Leiden, and was awarded the Wilks and Noether prizes. He is also the author of Testing Statistical Hypotheses, Theory of Point Estimation, and Elements of Large-Sample Theory, all published by Springer. Two more elementary books, Basic Concepts of Probability and Statistics (joint with Hodges) and Nonparametrics have recently been reissued by SIAM and Springer, respectively.

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Reminiscences of a Statistician

  • Book Subtitle: The Company I Kept

  • Authors: E. L. Lehmann

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-71597-1

  • Publisher: Springer New York, NY

  • eBook Packages: Mathematics and Statistics, Mathematics and Statistics (R0)

  • Copyright Information: Springer-Verlag New York 2008

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-0-387-71596-4Published: 26 November 2007

  • eBook ISBN: 978-0-387-71597-1Published: 26 December 2007

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XII, 316

  • Number of Illustrations: 65 b/w illustrations

  • Topics: Statistics, general

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