Re: Power Law of Probability? (The book "Chances Are" by the Kaplans)

W. Watson wrote:
Old Mac User wrote:

<snip>


I'll answer both the previous two posts here. See Amazon. In fact, see <http://www.amazon.com/Chances-Are-Adventures-Probability/dp/0670034878/sr=1-1/qid=1164640918/ref=sr_1_1/102-1905724-8880112?ie=UTF8&s=books>. 12 reviews, and all 4 to 5 stars (the highest possible is 5).If I'm not mistaken, both or one of, Discover and Sci Am magazines gave it favorable reviews. Aside from the goofiness I pointed out, the book actually is an interesting read--so far. I'm only 70 pages into it. An example of an interesting historic observation is that Gauss and Poison got the credit for distributions that DeMoivre discovered.

Ah well, it's obvious from the names that the distributions weren't discovered by Gauss or Poisson!

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigler's_law_of_eponymy>

Stigler is a historian of statistics (one of the few!), so if you want something more academic, then he is worth reading.

Bob

--
Bob O'Hara
Department of Mathematics and Statistics
P.O. Box 68 (Gustaf Hällströmin katu 2b)
FIN-00014 University of Helsinki
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