mathematics

Lowell Reed

Lowell Reed 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 Lowell Reed rather than just read about it. In short: Lowell Jacob Reed (January 8, 1886 – April 29, 1966) was 7th president of the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. He was born in Berlin, New Hampshire, the son of Jason Reed, a millwright and farmer, and Louella Coffin Reed.

Key takeaways

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

Reference excerpt

Lowell Jacob Reed (January 8, 1886 – April 29, 1966) was 7th president of the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. He was born in Berlin, New Hampshire, the son of Jason Reed, a millwright and farmer, and Louella Coffin Reed.

Education and career He had a long career as a research scientist in biostatistics and public health administration at Hopkins, where he was previously dean and director of the School of Public Health and later was vice president in charge of medical activities. He was an Invited Speaker at the ICM in 1924 in Toronto. In 1927 he was elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association. As a researcher, he developed a well known statistical technique for estimating the ED-50, and his work with epidemiologist Wade Hampton Frost on the Reed–Frost epidemic models also remains well known. He died in Berlin, New Hampshire, in 1966. Lowell Reed attended the University of Maine, graduating in 1907 with a degree in electrical engineering. In 1915 he earned a PhD in mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania. This unusual combination of disciplines was put to use when he arrived at Johns Hopkins University in 1918, where he organized the Department of Biometry and Vital Statistics at the School of Hygiene and Public Health (now the Bloomberg School of Public Health) and was credited with coining the term "biostatistics". He became chair of that department in 1925 and, in 1947, was named vice president in charge of medical activities. Reed retired from the Hopkins faculty in June 1953, only to be recalled later that summer to serve as president when Detlev Bronk departed for Rockefeller University. In September 1953, he returned to Baltimore from his home in New Hampshire to accept the presidency, stating, "For 30-odd years, I have had a glorious time at the Hopkins. I owed it to the people there to return." Although he made it clear that he did not plan to serve indefinitely, he did not regard himself as a caretaker or interim president. He oversaw the end of the Owen Lattimore espionage indictments (all charges were dropped in 1955), and new construction on the various Hopkins campuses, while still keeping a hand in biostatistics. Reed retired for the second and final time in 1956, succeeded as president by Milton S. Eisenhower. Returning to his beloved New Hampshire farm, he again took up his hobbies of woodworking, painting, hiking and camping, and enjoyed an active retirement until his death in 1966. Reed Hall, a residence hall for medical school students and house staff on the Johns Hopkins medical campus, was named in his honor in 1962.

Selected publications with Raymond Pearl: "On the rate of growth of the population of the United States since 1790 and its mathematical representation." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 6, no. 6 (1920): 275–288. with Raymond Pearl: "Skew-growth curves." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 11, no. 1 (1925): 16–22. with Raymond Pearl: "On the summation of logistic curves." Journal of the Royal Statistical Society 90, no. 4 (1927): 729–746. doi:10.2307/2341367 with Hugo Muench: "A simple method of estimating fifty per cent endpoints." American journal of epidemiology 27, no. 3 (1938): 493–497. with Margaret Merrell: "A short method for constructing an abridged life table." American Journal of Hygiene 30 (1939). with Raymond Pearl and Joseph F. Kish: "The logistic curve and the census count of 1940." Science (New York, NY) 92, no. 2395 (1940): 486–488. doi:10.1126/science.92.2395.486

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Lowell Reed

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Lowell Reed 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 Lowell Reed 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 Lowell Reed 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 Lowell Reed

In research: Lowell Reed 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 Lowell Reed 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: Lowell Reed is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1886 births, 1966 deaths, 20th-century American academics, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Lowell Reed 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 Lowell Reed in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Lowell Reed 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 Lowell Reed out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Lowell Reed in simple terms?

Why does Lowell Reed 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 Lowell Reed?

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 Lowell Reed.