Stephen Stigler

Stephen M. Stigler
Born	(1941-08-10) August 10, 1941 (age 83) Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.
Alma mater	Carleton College (BA) University of California, Berkeley (PhD)
Known for	Stigler's law of eponymy
Scientific career
Fields	Robust statistics
Institutions	University of Wisconsin–Madison University of Chicago Institute of Mathematical Statistics
Thesis	Linear Functions of Order Statistics  (1967)
Doctoral advisor	Lucien Le Cam
Doctoral students	Lee-Jen Wei Alan Agresti
Website	www.stat.uchicago.edu/~stigler/

Stephen Mack Stigler (born August 10, 1941) is the Ernest DeWitt Burton Distinguished Service Professor at the Department of Statistics of the University of Chicago. ^[1] He has authored several books on the history of statistics; he is the son of the economist George Stigler.

Stigler is also known for Stigler's law of eponymy which states that no scientific discovery is named after its original discoverer – whose first formulation he credits to sociologist Robert K. Merton.

Biography

Stigler was born in Minneapolis. ^[2] He received his Ph.D. in 1967 from the University of California, Berkeley. His dissertation was on linear functions of order statistics, and his advisor was Lucien Le Cam. His research has focused on statistical theory of robust estimators and the history of statistics.

Stigler taught at University of Wisconsin–Madison until 1979 when he joined the University of Chicago. In 2006, he was elected to membership of the American Philosophical Society, ^[3] and is a past president (1994) of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics.

His father was the economist George Stigler, who was a close friend of Milton Friedman.

Bibliography

Books

• The History of Statistics: The Measurement of Uncertainty before 1900 . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1986. ISBN   978-0-6744-0341-3.
• Statistics on the Table: The History of Statistical Concepts and Methods. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1999. ISBN   978-0-6740-0979-0.
• The Seven Pillars of Statistical Wisdom. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 2016. ISBN   978-0-6740-8891-7.
• Casanova's Lottery: The History of a Revolutionary Game of Chance . Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2022. ISBN   9780226820781.

As editor

• Stigler, S. M. (1980). American Contributions to Mathematical Statistics in the Nineteenth Century (2 Vols.). New York: Arno Press. ISBN   978-0-4051-2590-4.
• Stigler, S. M.; Wong, W. H.; Xu, D. (2002). R. R. Bahadur's Lectures on the Theory of Estimation (Lecture Notes-Regional Monograph Series, Vol. 39). Beachwood, OH: Institute for Mathematical Statistics. ISBN   978-0-9406-0053-9.

Selected articles

• ——— Gergonne, J. D. (1974) [1815]. Ralph St. John and S. M. Stigler (ed.). "The application of the method of least squares to the interpolation of sequences (translated by Ralph St. John and S. M. Stigler)". Historia Mathematica. 1 (4) (translated by Ralph St. John and S. M. Stigler from the 1815 French ed.): 439–47. doi:10.1016/0315-0860(74)90034-2.
• ——— Stigler, Stephen M. (1974). "Gergonne's 1815 paper on the design and analysis of polynomial regression experiments". Historia Mathematica. 1 (4): 431–39. doi:10.1016/0315-0860(74)90033-0.
• ——— Stigler, Stephen M. (March 1978). "Mathematical statistics in the early States". Annals of Statistics. 6 (2): 239–65. doi: 10.1214/aos/1176344123 . JSTOR   2958876. MR   0483118.
  • Stigler, Stephen M. (1980). "Mathematical Statistics in the Early States". In Stephen M. Stigler (ed.). American Contributions to Mathematical Statistics in the Nineteenth Century, Volumes I & II. Vol. I. New York: Arno Press.
  • Stigler, Stephen M. (1989). "Mathematical Statistics in the Early States". In Peter Duren (ed.). A Century of Mathematics in America. Vol. III. Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society. pp. 537–64.
• ——— Stigler, Stephen M. (1978). "Francis Ysidro Edgeworth, statistician". Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A. 141 (3): 287–322. doi:10.2307/2344804. JSTOR   2344804.
• ——— Stigler, S. M. (1980). Stigler's law of eponymy. Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences, 39: 147–58 (Merton Festschrift Volume, F. Gieryn (ed))
• ——— Stigler, Stephen M. (November 1983). "Who discovered Bayes's theorem?". The American Statistician. 37 (4): 290–96. doi:10.2307/2682766. JSTOR   2682766. MR   1712969. Republished in Statistics on the table ().
• ——— Stephen M. Stigler (November 1992). "A Historical View of Statistical Concepts in Psychology and Educational Research". American Journal of Education. 101 (1): 60–70. doi:10.1086/444032. S2CID   143685203.

See also

• Chicago school of economics
• George Stigler
• List of examples of Stigler's law
• Milton Friedman
• Stigler's law of eponymy

References

1. Catherine Behan (May 28, 1998) 1998 Quantrell Award: Stephen Stigler University of Chicago Chronicle. 17(17).
2. Foundation, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial (1976). "Reports of the President and the Treasurer - John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation".
3. "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved 2021-05-24.

External links

• Official CV of Stephen M. Stigler (September 2015)
• Homepage at the University of Chicago Archived 2013-04-28 at the Wayback Machine
• Mathematics Genealogy Project: Stephen Mack Stigler
• Works by or about Stephen Stigler at the Internet Archive