Reminiscences of a Statistician: The Company I Kept |  | Author: Erich Lehmann
Publisher: Springer
List Price: $44.95
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Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 556880
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Pages: 316
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6 x 0.7
ISBN: 0387715967
Dewey Decimal Number: 519.509
EAN: 9780387715964
ASIN: 0387715967
Publication Date: November 26, 2007
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Product Description
This relatively nontechnical book is the first account of the history of statistics from the Fisher revolution to the computer revolution. It sketches the careers, and highlights of some of the work, of 65 people, most of them statisticians. What gives the book its special character is its emphasis on the author's interaction with these people and the inclusion of many personal anecdotes. Combined, these portraits provide a panoramic view of statistics during the period in question. Included are discussions of such topics as nonparametrics, Bayesian approaches, and data analysis. The stress is on ideas and technical material is held to a minimum. Thus the book is accessible to anyone with at least an elementary background in statistics.
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| Customer Reviews:
statistics from the Northern California hotbed April 4, 2009
Michael R. Chernick (Holland PA)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
My wife found this book in Barnes and Nobles and when I said I wanted it she got it for my birthday. I relate to Lehmann's book in many ways.
1. I got my Ph.D. in Statistics from Stanford in 1978 and most of my professors are mentioned in this book as Berkeley and Stanford in addition to being competitive rivals also had joint colloquia.
2. I was fortunate to be at Stanford during some of the great days of the growth of statistics. Efron discovery of bootstrap occurred then. Charles Stein had been a Berkeley Professor and still had many connections there.
3. Although I didn't know them as well as ths Stanford faculty I did meet Neyman, Bickel, Lehmann, LeCam, Brillinger and Barlow.
4. When studying mathematical statistics Erich Lehmann's Testing Statistical Hypotheses was manditory. Later I also really enjoyed his nonparametrics book which gave me the clearest picture of the value of nonparametrics and a understanding rank tests. When I studied nonparametrics from Paul Switzer at Stanford we used the text by Hajek and Sidak which in addition to being very theoretical was highly abstract and did not give the insight that I got from Lehmann.
5. I always enjoy reading about the history of statistics and by and large this is a book about the history of statistics in its hayday from the personal perspective of one who was at the center of it, contributed greatly to the theory and the graduate education of so many statisticians.
The book focusses on Lehmann's career in statistics through vignettes of his many collaborators and collegues. The list includes Fisher, Egon and Karl Pearson, Herb Robbins, Richar von Mises, Harold Cramer, Jerzy Neyman (of course), Joe Hodges, Evelyn Fix, Julia Robinson, Peter Bickel, Peter Huber, Frank Hampel, John Tukey, C. R. Rao, David Blackwell, Lucien LeCam, Kjeil Doksum, Steve Stigler, Henry Scheffe, F. N. David, Betty Scott, David Freedman, Abraham Wald, Abe Girshick, Lehmann's wife Julie Shaffer and my Stanford professors, Lincoln Moses, Ingram Olkin, Ted Anderson, Brad Efron and Persi Diaconis. This is not a complete list but it does give the flavor of the richness of Lehmann's experience.
The book is not too technical and can be enjoyed by anyone with an interest in statistics and its history. It is especially valuable to statisticians because it explains the importance of the contributions of the colleagues and collaborators that Lehmann discusses. It also deals with the foundations and provides a very enlightened perspective on the Fisher-Neyman controversy and the frequentist vs Bayesian approaches (including empirical Bayes). His first graduate student Colin Blyth and his last Javier Rojo also have sections in this book.
Lehmann has written many great texts and they all are presented with rigor and clarity. This is his first on the history of statistics, his research and the work of his many acquaintances during his career. I found it fascinating and illuminating. Even though I knew some of the stories, Lehmann shed new light on a number of events and statistical philosophy.
A history of statistics in America from someone who was there April 7, 2008
Howard Wainer (Philadelphia, PA)
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
Statistics is a relatively new science, with most of its development during the 20th century.
It really got rolling in the US when Jerzy Neyman came to Berkeley and initiated its storied department. His first student was Erich Lehmann, a Jewish refugee from Hitler's Germany. Lehmann is the author of four of the most influential books in mathematical statistics and in the course of his long and illustrious career has known virtually all of the major figures of 20th century statistics. Now, in his 91st year, Lehmann has published a warm and charming memoire describing his life's work as it intersected with scores of other statisticians.
This book is a real page turner that helps to place the formal statistical work of the 20th century into a context and can serve as an update to Stigler's "History of Statistics before 1900" until someone writes a formal "History of Statistics from 1900-2000."
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