mathematics

Lawrence D. Brown

Lawrence D. Brown is a mathematics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Lawrence D. Brown rather than just read about it. In short: Lawrence David (Larry) Brown (16 December 1940 – 21 February 2018) was Miers Busch Professor and Professor of Statistics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is known for his groundbreaking work in a broad range of fields including decision theory, recurrence and partial differential equations, nonparametric function estimation, minimax and adaptation theory, and…

Key takeaways

Lawrence D. Brown belongs to mathematics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Lawrence D. Brown to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Lawrence D. Brown from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Lawrence David (Larry) Brown (16 December 1940 – 21 February 2018) was Miers Busch Professor and Professor of Statistics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is known for his groundbreaking work in a broad range of fields including decision theory, recurrence and partial differential equations, nonparametric function estimation, minimax and adaptation theory, and the analysis of census data and call-center data.

Career Brown was educated at the California Institute of Technology and Cornell University, where he earned his Ph.D. in 1964. He earned numerous honors, including election to the United States National Academy of Sciences, and published widely, beginning with his Ph.D. research, which made major advances in admissibility. He was president of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics in 1992–93. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2013. After having been assistant professor at University of California at Berkeley, associate professor at Cornell University – with the latter move entailing a change from a statistics to a mathematics department, allowing him to avoid being drafted for the Vietnam War – and professor at Cornell University and Rutgers University, he was invited to join the Department of Statistics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Personal life Brown was born in Los Angeles to parents Louis M. Brown and Hermione Brown. He was married to Linda Zhao, a fellow statistician at the Wharton School.

Honors and awards Member, American Academy of Arts and Sciences Member, National Academy of Sciences Fellow of the American Statistical Association (A.S.A) Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (I.M.S.) Wald Lecturer, Institute of Mathematical Statistics, August 1985; Lady Davis Professorship, Hebrew University, 1988 Doctor of Science (Honorary), Purdue University, 1993 Wilks Award of the American Statistical Association, 2002 C.R. and B. Rao Prize, 2007 The Provost's Award for Distinguished Ph.D. Teaching and Mentoring, University of Pennsylvania, 2011

In his honor Institute of Mathematical Statistics Lawrence D. Brown Ph.D. Student Award

Selected publications

Books 1985. (with Olkin, I., Sacks, J., and Wynn, H.P.) Jack Carl Kiefer Collected Papers, 3 vols., Springer-Verlag, New York. 1986. (with Olkin, I., Sacks, J., and Wynn, H.P.) Jack Carl Kiefer Collected Papers Supplementary Volume, Springer-Verlag, New York. 1986. Fundamentals of Statistical Exponential Families with Applications in Statistical Decision Theory, Inst. of Math. Statist., Hayward, California. 2005. (with Plewes, T.J., and Gerstein, M.A.) Measuring Research and Development in the United States Economy, National Academies Press. 2010. (with Michael L. Cohen, Daniel L. Cork, and Constance F. Citro) Envisioning the 2020 Census. Panel on the Design of the 2020 Census Program of Evaluations and Experiments, Committee on National Statistics, Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.

References

External links Lawrence David Brown at the Mathematics Genealogy Project Faculty webpage Personal webpages Biography of Lawrence D Brown A Conversation with Lawrence D Brown Lawrence Brown's ResearchGate Profile

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Lawrence D. Brown

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Lawrence D. Brown claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In mathematics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Lawrence D. Brown before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Lawrence D. Brown ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Lawrence D. Brown

In research: Lawrence D. Brown appears in mathematics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Lawrence D. Brown in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Lawrence D. Brown is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1940 births, 2018 deaths, American mathematical statisticians, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Lawrence D. Brown outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Lawrence D. Brown in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Lawrence D. Brown means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Lawrence D. Brown out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Lawrence D. Brown in simple terms?

Why does Lawrence D. Brown matter?

Because it connects several mathematics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Lawrence D. Brown?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Lawrence D. Brown.