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Stochastic Stamps: A Philatelic Introduction to Chance

Simo Puntanen and George P. H. Styan

The impact of and statistics on society as reflected in postage stamps

illiam L. Schaaf in his 1978 Bernoulli is depicted (anonymously) book, and : (1629–1695) with a formula and graph for the law WAn Adventure in Postage Stamps, Pierre-Simon, Marquis de of large in the stamp, which found the rich and fascinating world of Laplace (1749–1827) was issued in celebration of the 1994 postage stamps to be “a mirror of civi- International Congress of Mathemati- lization”; he wrote that “multitudes of Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis cians, held in Zürich, Switzerland. This stamps reflect the impact of mathemat- (1893–1972) stamp seems to be the only one issued ics and science on society.” Florence Nightingale for Bernoulli. We agree, and, in this article, we look (1820–1910) at what we will call “stochastic stamps”— Blaise (1623–1662) postage stamps related in some way to chance (i.e., that have a connection with Lambert Adolphe Jacques probability and/or statistics). Quetelet (1796–1874) We identify 26 distinguished people related in some way to chance who have We believe no stamps have been been honored with a postage stamp. issued (at least we have not identified Images of 25 stamps from 15 countries any) to honor the other 45. illustrate the article.

Ten Distinguished Scholars As a starting , we identify 10 major

suspects, considered distinguished Courtesy of Jeff Miller scholars by the editors of both Statisti- Roger Joseph Boscovich: Croatia 1943 cians of the Centuries and Leading Personalities in Statistical . Between them, these books include biographical sketches of 165 people, with an intersection of

Courtesy of Jeff Miller Shown on this stamp is a portrait 55 people. Of these 55, we identified Jacob (Jacques) Bernoulli: Switzerland 1994 of Boscovich, who was a physicist, stamps in honor of 10, listed as follows: astronomer, , philoso- pher, diplomat, poet, and Jesuit priest Jacob (Jacques) Bernoulli from Ragusa, then an independent state, (1654–1705) The eldest of four brothers, Bernoulli today Dubrovnik in Croatia. “In 1760,” Roger Joseph Boscovich lived mainly in Switzerland. He was one according to Wikipedia, “he developed (1711–1787) of eight prominent in a simple geometrical method of fitting a the Bernoulli family and is famous for Pafnuty Lvovich Chebyshev straight to a set of observations on his Ars Conjectandi, a groundbreaking (1821–1894) two variables using (constrained) least work on probability theory (published sum of absolute deviations.” Carl Friedrich posthumously in 1713), and his research (1777–1855) concerning the law of large numbers.

36 VOL. 21, NO. 3, 2008