<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: What happened to J M Keynes,G Boole,and B.Mandelbrot?
Review: I highly recommend this book for the general interest reader.It contains a number of short,but informative,essays,each covering ,on average,2-10 pages.Each essay gives a short biography of an individual scholar who has made a relevant contribution to either theoretical or applied statistics or probability.The contribution is assessed and discussed.Those covered include Sir Ronald Fisher,de Finetti,Ramsey,Savage,Galton,Yule,Karl and Egon Pearson, Harold Jeffreys,and W. Lexis,to name just a few.Surprisingly,the contributions of John Maynard Keynes,George Boole and Benoit Mandelbrot to applied probability and statistics are not covered although each is briefly mentioned in essays covering others.Thus,for instance,Keynes is mentioned in the essay on Frank Ramsey,but no clue is provided the reader about Keynes's original contribution to probability,which was the first systematic exposition of an interval estimate approach to probability analysis based on the work of George Boole.Keynes's contribution is contained in chapters 5,10,15,17 and Part III of his 1921 masterpiece,A Treatise on Probability.Mandelbrot's work,demonstating that there is little,if any, support for the overwhelming use of the normal probability distribution in the study of price movements in financial,stock and commodity markets by financial analysts and economists,calls into question the entire foundation of financial theory that has been built upon the Capital Asset Pricing Model(CAPM)and the Black-Scholes equation.This reviewer feels that the editors could of at least devoted three pages to each of the above mentioned scholars.
<< 1 >>
|
