Edwin James George Pitman (29 October 1897 – 21 July 1993) was an

Australian Australian(s) may refer to: Australia * Australia, a country * Australians, citizens of the Commonwealth of Australia ** European Australians ** Anglo-Celtic Australians, Australians descended principally from British colonists ** Aboriginal Aus ...

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...

who made significant contributions to

statistics Statistics (from German language, German: ', "description of a State (polity), state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data. In applying statistics to a s ...

and

probability theory Probability theory or probability calculus is the branch of mathematics concerned with probability. Although there are several different probability interpretations, probability theory treats the concept in a rigorous mathematical manner by expre ...

. In particular, he is remembered primarily as the originator of the Pitman permutation test, Pitman nearness an
Pitman efficiency
His work ''the Pitman measure of closeness'' or ''Pitman nearness'' concerning the exponential families of

probability distribution In probability theory and statistics, a probability distribution is a Function (mathematics), function that gives the probabilities of occurrence of possible events for an Experiment (probability theory), experiment. It is a mathematical descri ...

s has been studied extensively since the 1980s by C. R. Rao, Pranab K. Sen, and others. The Pitman–Koopman–Darmois theorem states that only exponential families of probability distributions admit a

sufficient statistic In statistics, sufficiency is a property of a statistic computed on a sample dataset in relation to a parametric model of the dataset. A sufficient statistic contains all of the information that the dataset provides about the model parameters. It ...

whose dimension remains bounded as the sample size grows.

Biography

Pitman was born in Melbourne on 29 October 1897, and attended

University of Melbourne The University of Melbourne (colloquially known as Melbourne University) is a public university, public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in the state ...

, residing at Ormond College, where he graduated with First Class Honours. In 1926 he was appointed

Professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other tertiary education, post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin ...

Mathematics Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many ar ...

at the

University of Tasmania The University of Tasmania (UTAS) is a public research university, primarily located in Tasmania, Australia. Founded in 1890, it is Australia's fourth oldest university. Christ College (University of Tasmania), Christ College, one of the unive ...

, which he held until his retirement in 1962. He was a founding member and second President of the

Australian Mathematical Society The Australian Mathematical Society (AustMS) was founded in 1956 and is the national society of the mathematics profession in Australia. One of the society's listed purposes is to promote the cause of mathematics in the community by representing ...

. He was also active within the Statistical Society of Australia, which in 1978 named the Pitman medal in his honour.

Terminology

* For "the sum of squares of deviations from the mean," he coined the term squariance. * For "the logarithm of the likelihood" he coined the term loglihood. However, neither of these terms caught on.

Pitman's published work (selected)

* * * * * * * * *

Autobiography

Pitman contributed a chapter, "Reminiscences of a mathematician who strayed into statistics", to the volume *Joseph M. Gani (ed.) (1982) ''The Making of Statisticians,'' New York: Springer-Verlag.

Family

He had four children, including Jim Pitman, a Professor of Statistics at

UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after the Anglo-Irish philosopher George Berkele ...

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Pitman, Edwin 1897 births 1993 deaths Australian statisticians Mathematicians from Melbourne Fellows of the Australian Academy of Science Academic staff of the University of Tasmania University of Melbourne alumni Mathematical statisticians