Background
Blackwell, David Harold was born on April 24, 1919 in Centralia, Illinois, United States. Son of Grover and Mabel (Johnson) Blackwell.
( Evaluating statistical procedures through decision and ...)
Evaluating statistical procedures through decision and game theory, as first proposed by Neyman and Pearson and extended by Wald, is the goal of this problem-oriented text in mathematical statistics. First-year graduate students in statistics and other students with a background in statistical theory and advanced calculus will find a rigorous, thorough presentation of statistical decision theory treated as a special case of game theory. The work of Borel, von Neumann, and Morgenstern in game theory, of prime importance to decision theory, is covered in its relevant aspects: reduction of games to normal forms, the minimax theorem, and the utility theorem. With this introduction, Blackwell and Professor Girshick look at: Values and Optimal Strategies in Games; General Structure of Statistical Games; Utility and Principles of Choice; Classes of Optimal Strategies; Fixed Sample-Size Games with Finite Ω and with Finite A; Sufficient Statistics and the Invariance Principle; Sequential Games; Bayes and Minimax Sequential Procedures; Estimation; and Comparison of Experiments. A few topics not directly applicable to statistics, such as perfect information theory, are also discussed. Prerequisites for full understanding of the procedures in this book include knowledge of elementary analysis, and some familiarity with matrices, determinants, and linear dependence. For purposes of formal development, only discrete distributions are used, though continuous distributions are employed as illustrations. The number and variety of problems presented will be welcomed by all students, computer experts, and others using statistics and game theory. This comprehensive and sophisticated introduction remains one of the strongest and most useful approaches to a field which today touches areas as diverse as gambling and particle physics.
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Blackwell, David Harold was born on April 24, 1919 in Centralia, Illinois, United States. Son of Grover and Mabel (Johnson) Blackwell.
In 1938 he earned his bachelor"s degree in mathematics, a master"s degree in 1939, and was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy in mathematics in 1941 at the age of 22, all by the University of Illinois. At the Institute, he met John von Neumann and von Neumann asked Blackwell to discuss his Doctor of Philosophy thesis with him.
Born in Centralia, Illinois, he was the first African American inducted into the National Academy of Sciences, and the first black tenured faculty member at University of California Berkeley. Blackwell entered the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with the intent to teach elementary school mathematics. He did a year of post-doctoral studies as a fellow at Institute for Advanced Study in 1941-1942.
Blackwell, who believed that von Neumann was just being polite and not genuinely interested in his work, did not approach him until von Neumann himself asked him again a few months later.
According to Blackwell on this meeting, "He (von Neumann) listened to me talk about this rather obscure subject and in ten minutes he knew more about it than I did." He departed when he was prevented from attending lectures or undertaking research at nearby Princeton University, which the Institute for Advanced Study has historically collaborated with in research and scholarship activities. Seeking a permanent position, he wrote letters of application to 105 Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
He felt at the time that a black teacher would be limited to teaching only at black colleges. He also sought a position at the University of California, Berkeley, and was interviewed by statistician Jerzy Neyman.
While Neyman supported his appointment, race-based objections prevented his appointment at that time.
He was offered a post at Southern University at Baton Rouge, which he held in 1942-1943, followed by a year as an Instructor at Clark College in Atlanta. He then moved to Howard University in 1944 and within three years was appointed full professor and head of the Mathematics Department. He remained at Howard until 1954.
He took a position at University of California Berkeley as a visiting professor in 1954, and was hired by University of California Berkeley as a full professor in the newly created Statistics Department in 1955, becoming the Statistics department chair in 1956.
He spent the rest of his career at University of California Berkeley, retiring in 1988. Blackwell was also a pioneer in textbook writing and game theory.
Blackwell wrote one of the first Bayesian textbooks, his 1969 Basic Statistics. I"ve worked in so many areas—I"m sort of a dilettante.
Basically, I"m not interested in doing research and I never have been.
I"m interested in understanding, which is quite a different thing. And often to understand something you have to work it out yourself because no one else has done lieutenant — David Blackwell R. A.
( Evaluating statistical procedures through decision and ...)
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National Academy of Sciences]
Blackwell was also a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity (Tau chapter – University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign).
Married Ann Madison, December 27, 1944. Children: Ann, Julia, David, Ruth, Grover, Vera, Hugo, Sara.