Here you see my scruffy sketch of Egon drawn 20 years ago for the frontispiece of my book, “Error and the Growth of Experimental Knowledge” (EGEK 1996). The caption is
“I might recall how certain early ideas came into my head as I sat on a gate overlooking an experimental blackcurrant plot… –E.S Pearson, “Statistical Concepts in Their Relation to Reality”.
He is responding to Fisher to “dispel the picture of the Russian technological bogey”. [i]
So, as I said in my last post, just to make a short story long, I’ve recently been scouring around the history and statistical philosophies of Neyman, Pearson and Fisher for purposes of a book soon to be completed, and I discovered a funny little error about this quote. Only maybe 3 or 4 people alive would care, but maybe someone out there knows the real truth.
OK, so I’d been rereading Constance Reid’s great biography of Neyman, and in one place she interviews Egon about the sources of inspiration for their work. Here’s what Egon tells her: Continue reading






















