1 Studies in the History of Statistics and Probability ... - Sheynin, Oscar

I have published something in that direction [i, ii] but now I wouldhave wished to accomplish such work fuller and better. Finally, foreach author the aim of publication consists not only in instructingothers, but to learn something himself as well. In those booklets, Ihave made some rather extreme statements on the practical uselessnessof certain specific methods, for example [...]. It is not difficult toquestion such viewpoints; concerning each definite problem it issufficient to indicate at least one successful practical application of thediscussed method. Obviously neither I, nor anyone else is acquaintedwith all the pertinent literature but I attempted to accomplish a sampleof sorts from an infinite amount of investigations so that the partisansof one or another method could have felt offended by my extremepoint of view and prove the opposite.However, concerning the application of the Bernoulli pattern tojudicial verdicts, nowadays no one will probably argue; it is generallyacknowledged rubbish 1 . All the other problems are, however, quitevital. I have thus considered the publication of those statements not asfinal conclusions but as the beginning of a big work for betterascertaining the actual situation.It was thought that we will have to do with a comparatively smallamount of concrete material. However, this is not the only essentialadvantage of the described method of sampling as compared with afull study of the publications. It is known that scientific papers areusually too short so that reading them means decoding 2 whereas in thiscase all difficult questions could have been resolved by asking theauthors themselves.Of course, along with really scientific objections I have receivedother, insignificant letters. Usually such are reports about the results ofinvestigations in which the correspondent did not participate but onlyknows about them by hearsay. In such cases, since no definite data areprovided, it always remains incomprehensible whether the success wasachieved owing to a correct application of the theory of probability orin spite of its wrong use which is not excluded either. For example, ifthe report informs about the successful work of some technical system,that could have been achieved both because of a correct estimation ofthe essence of random disturbances but also because the designerneglected wrong stochastic estimation and guided himself by hisengineer experience which had proved sufficient.On the whole, the desired result was however achieved: I haveindeed obtained objections of a scientific kind, although a smallnumber of them. They concerned the tail areas of distributions,forecasting stochastic processes and possibilities of a periodogramanalysis. Regarding the first two items, I was able to become thusacquainted with interesting and, judging by their first results,promising studies, far, however, from being accomplished. Therefore,I should not yet reject my statement that no reliable practicalapplication of the pertinent methods is known. In spite of all of itsnegative essence, it is useful in that it stresses the need to workpractically in those fields.The most remarkable and scientifically irrefutable was the objectionmade by Professor V. A. Timofeev concerning the application of86