Harold Hotelling

Infobox Scientist
name = Harold Hotelling


caption =
birth_date = Birth date|1895|9|29
birth_place = Fulda, Minnesota, U.S.
death_date = death date and age|1973|12|26|1895|9|29
death_place = Chapel Hill, North Carolina, U.S.
residence = U.S.
nationality = American
field = Statistics Economics
work_institution = Univ. of North Carolina 1946–73 Columbia University 1931–46 Stanford University 1927–31
alma_mater = Princeton University PhD 1924 University of Washington BA 1919, MA 1921
doctoral_advisor = Oswald Veblen
doctoral_students = Kenneth Arrow Seymour Geisser
known_for = Hotelling's T-square distribution Canonical correlation analysis Hotelling's law Hotelling's lemma Hotelling's rule
prizes = North Carolina Award 1972
religion =
footnotes =

Harold Hotelling (Fulda, Minnesota, september 29, 1895 – december 26, 1973) was a mathematical statistician, and very influential economic theorist. His name is known to all statisticians because of Hotelling's T-square distribution and its use in statistical hypothesis testing and confidence regions. He also introduced canonical correlation analysis, and is the eponym of Hotelling's law, Hotelling's lemma, and Hotelling's rule in economics.

He was Associate Professor of Mathematics at Stanford University from 1927, a member of the faculty of Columbia University from 1931 until 1946, and a Professor of Mathematical Statistics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 1946 until his death. A street in Chapel Hill bears his name. In 1972 he received the North Carolina Award for contributions to science.

The historian Stephen Stigler has said that it was because of Hotelling's suggestion in a letter to R.A. Fisher that cumulants are known by their now-standard name.

His economics papers have inspired research agenda in several areas still active. Hotelling has a crucial place in the pedigree of modern economic theory. While at the University of Washington, he was encouraged to switch from pure mathematics toward mathematical economics by the famous mathematician Eric Temple Bell. Later, at Columbia University in the '40s, Hotelling in turn encouraged young Kenneth Arrow to switch from mathematics and statistics applied to acturial studies towards more general applications of mathematics in general economic theory.

Works

* "A General Mathematical Theory of Depreciation", 1925, "Journal of ASA".
* "Differential Equations Subject to Error", 1927, "Journal of ASA"
* "Applications of the Theory of Error to the Interpretation of Trends", with H. Working, 1929, "Journal of ASA".
* "Stability in Competition", 1929, "EJ".
* "The Economics of Exhaustible Resources", 1931, "JPE".
* "The Generalization of Student's Ratio", 1931, "Annals of Mathematical Statistics".
* "Edgeworth's Taxation Paradox and the Nature of Supply and Demand Functions", 1932, "JPE".
* "Analysis of a Complex of Statistical Variables with Principal Components",1933, "Journal of Educational Psychology"
* "Demand Functions with Limited Budgets", 1935, "Econometrica".
* "The most predictable criterion", 1935, "Journal of Educational Psychology"
* "Relation Between Two Sets of Variates", 1936, "Biometrika".
* "Rank Correlation and Tests of Significance Involving no Assumption of Normality", in "American Mathematical Statistics", 1936 (coauthor M. R. Pabst)
* "The General Welfare in Relation to Problems of Taxation and of Railway and Utility Rates", 1938, "Econometrica".
* "A generalized T-Test and measure of multivariate dispersion", Proc. Second Berkeley Symposium of Mathematical Statistics and Probability, 1951

References

*Kenneth J. Arrow, 1987, “Hotelling ,Harold" "The ", v. 2, pp. 670–71.

* I. Olkina and A. R. Sampsonb (2001). "Hotelling, Harold (1895–1973)," "International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences", pp. 6921–6925. [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B7MRM-4MT09VJ-13C&_rdoc=59&_hierId=151000072&_refWorkId=21&_explode=151000072&_fmt=summary&_orig=na&_docanchor=&_idxType=SC&view=c&_ct=148&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=e4ba3f06e428c87df3473fca3ff2a43f Abstract.]

External links

* [http://cepa.newschool.edu/het/profiles/hotell.htm New School: Harold Hotelling]
* [http://www.amstat.org/about/statisticians/index.cfm?fuseaction=biosinfo&BioID=7 American Statistical Association: Harold Hotelling]

These entries have photographs. There is another at
* [http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/maths/histstat/people/hotelling.gifHarold Hotelling] on the [http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/maths/histstat/people/welcome.htm Portraits of Statisticians] page.

For Hotelling's PhD students see
* [http://www.genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/html/id.phtml?id=35422 Harold Hotelling] on the [http://www.genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/html/search.phtml Mathematics Genealogy Project] page.