Sunday, July 25, 2010

Tardiness on Flowing Data

Flowing Data has become one of my favorite blogs recently after I was tipped off to it by my man Dave Eichler. The blog is really good at presenting cool graphics that convey neato stats and science things. It's a graphics heavy blog that makes for easy and interesting consumption.

The post I want to share with you is titled Tardiness Solves Statistics Theorems below and the anecdote comes from my alma mater, UC Berkeley.

"One day in 1939, Berkeley doctoral candidate George Dantzig arrived late for a statistics class taught by Jerzy Neyman. He copied down the two problems on the blackboard and turned them in a few days later, apologizing for the delay — he’d found them unusually difficult. Distracted, Neyman told him to leave his homework on the desk.
On a Sunday morning six weeks later, Neyman banged on Dantzig’s door. The problems that Dantzig had assumed were homework were actually unproved statistical theorems that Neyman had been discussing with the class — and Dantzig had proved both of them. Both were eventually published, with Dantzig as coauthor."