mathematics

Mindel C. Sheps

Mindel C. Sheps 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 Mindel C. Sheps rather than just read about it. In short: Mindel Cherniack Sheps (May 20, 1913 – January 13, 1973) was a Canadian physician, biostatistician and demographer. She held academic appointments at Harvard Medical School, University of Pittsburgh, Columbia University and UNC Chapel Hill, where she was Professor of Biostatistics.

Key takeaways

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

Reference excerpt

Mindel Cherniack Sheps (May 20, 1913 – January 13, 1973) was a Canadian physician, biostatistician and demographer. She held academic appointments at Harvard Medical School, University of Pittsburgh, Columbia University and UNC Chapel Hill, where she was Professor of Biostatistics.

Biography Sheps was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba in 1913. Her parents, Joseph and Fanya (Golden) Cherniack, were immigrants from southern Russia, and her brother, Saul Cherniack, became minister of finance in the Manitoba provincial government in the early 1970s. She married Cecil George Sheps in 1937. After obtaining her medical degree at the University of Manitoba in 1936, she went into general practice from 1939 to 1944 and ran successfully for the Winnipeg School Board in 1942. From 1944 to 1946, she was secretary to the health services planning commission of the government of Saskatchewan. In that position, Sheps was a key contributor to the Sigerist Report, which led to Saskatchewan enacting the first government hospital insurance plan in North America in 1945. Later on, after moving to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, she began to study biostatistics and held faculty positions at several universities before returning to UNC-Chapelel Hill in 1968, where she remained until she died in 1973. In addition to her academic career, she served as an adviser to the Government of India through the Ford Foundation and held an advisory role at World Health Organization. The Mindel C. Sheps Award, a collaborative project of the Population Association of America (PAA) and the University of North Carolina School of Public Health, is awarded every two years to honor exceptional achievements in mathematical demography or demographic methodology to candidates who demonstrate exemplary professional ethics and standards.

Research Sheps' work has had a significant influence on several academic fields. In epidemiology and biostatistics, Sheps' 1958 paper "Shall we count the living or the dead" contains one of the earliest discussions of challenges that arise from the asymmetry of the relative risk, a phenomenon that may make the effect estimate sensitive to whether it is based on the probability of the outcome, or the probability of not having the outcome. She devoted the last ten years of her life primarily to demography, a field in which she was largely self-taught. Her work in demography was among the first to study the determinants of variation in family formation. The Mindel C. Sheps award in mathematical demography is named in her honor.

Selected publications Sheps, M.C. (1958): "Shall we count the living or the dead?". New England Journal of Medicine 259:1210-1214. Sheps, M.C., and Menken, J. A. "Mathematical Models of Conception and Birth". Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973.

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Mindel C. Sheps

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Mindel C. Sheps 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 Mindel C. Sheps 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 Mindel C. Sheps 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 Mindel C. Sheps

In research: Mindel C. Sheps 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 Mindel C. Sheps 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: Mindel C. Sheps is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1913 births, 1973 deaths, 20th-century Canadian statisticians, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Mindel C. Sheps 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 Mindel C. Sheps in 20 minutes

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

Frequently asked questions

What is Mindel C. Sheps in simple terms?

Why does Mindel C. Sheps 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 Mindel C. Sheps?

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 Mindel C. Sheps.