mathematics

Samuel Kotz

Samuel Kotz 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 Samuel Kotz rather than just read about it. In short: Samuel Kotz (Hebrew: שמואל קוץ; August 30, 1930, Harbin, China – March 16, 2010, Kemp Mill, Maryland) was a professor and research scholar in the Department of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering, School of Engineering and Applied Science at The George Washington University from 1997 until his death on March 16, 2010. He was an author or editor of several standard reference works in statistics and probabi…

Key takeaways

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

Reference excerpt

Samuel Kotz (Hebrew: שמואל קוץ; August 30, 1930, Harbin, China – March 16, 2010, Kemp Mill, Maryland) was a professor and research scholar in the Department of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering, School of Engineering and Applied Science at The George Washington University from 1997 until his death on March 16, 2010. He was an author or editor of several standard reference works in statistics and probability theory.

Early life Kotz was born in Harbin, China, to a Jewish family who had left Russia following the Russian Revolution. He moved to Israel in 1949, serving in the Israeli Air Force. Kotz immigrated to the United States in the 1950s and become an American citizen in the 1970s.

Education and career Kotz studied electrical engineering at the Harbin Institute of Technology, graduating with honors in 1946. He obtained an M.A. with honors in mathematics in 1956 from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He obtained a PhD degree in Mathematical Statistics from Cornell University. In 1964, Kotz joined the University of Toronto as associate professor. He then moved to Temple University, Philadelphia, as a professor of mathematics in 1967 and the University of Maryland, College Park, as a professor in the College of Business and Management in 1979. In 1997 he joined the Operations Research Department at George Washington University. His visiting positions included Bowling Green State University, Bucknell University, Harbin Institute of Technology, Luleå University of Technology, Tel Aviv University, and University of Guelph.

Honors and awards Kotz was awarded honorary doctorates from Harbin Institute of Technology in 1982, University of Athens in 1995 and Bowling Green State University in 1997. He was a fellow of the American Statistical Association, fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, fellow of the Royal Statistical Society and elected member of the International Statistical Institute.

Awarded by the Washington Academy of Sciences in 1998

Family Kotz married Raysel Greenwald in 1962. They had their first child, Tamar Kotz, in 1965. Followed by Harold David Kotz in 1966 and Pnina Kotz in 1973. His first two children were born in Toronto, but moved to Philadelphia in 1967.

Publications He and Norman L. Johnson founded the Encyclopedia of Statistical Sciences (1982–1999), of which he was editor-in-chief. He was also a co-author of the four-volume Compendium on Statistical Distributions (First Edition 1969–1972, Second Edition 1993–1997). Over the course of his career he authored or co-authored a total of three Russian-English scientific dictionaries, over three dozen volumes/books/monographs in the field of statistics and quality control and over 280 papers.

Books Kotz, Samuel (1966). Russian-English dictionary and reader in the cybernetical sciences, with a selected bibliography of Soviet publications in the cybernetical sciences (in English and Russian). Internet Archive. New York, Academic Press. Kotz, Samuel (1971). Russian-English, English-Russian glossary of statistical terms;. Maurice G. Kendall. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd for the International Statistical Institute. ISBN 0-05-002446-9. OCLC 553936. Maĭstrov, L. E.; Kotz, Samuel (1974). Probability theory; a historical sketch. New York: Academic Press. ISBN 0-12-465750-8. OCLC 722855. Johnson, Norman Lloyd; Kotz, Samuel (1977). Urn models and their application : an approach to modern discrete probability theory. New York: Wiley. ISBN 0-471-44630-0. OCLC 2968014. Galambos, János; Kotz, Samuel (1978). Characterizations of probability distributions : a unified approach with an emphasis on exponential and related models. Berlin: Springer-Verlag. ISBN 0-387-08933-0. OCLC 4194743. Kotz, Samuel; Stroup, Donna F. (1983). Educated guessing : how to cope in an uncertain world. New York: M. Dekker. ISBN 0-8247-7000-5. OCLC 9442504. Johnson, Norman Lloyd; Kotz, Samuel; Wu, Xizhi (1991). Inspection errors for attributes in quality control (1st ed.). London: Chapman & Hall. ISBN 0-412-38770-0. OCLC 24011425. Kotz, Samuel; Johnson, Norman Lloyd, eds. (1992). Breakthroughs in statistics. New York: Springer-Verlag. ISBN 0-387-97566-7. OCLC 24213036. Kotz, Samuel; Johnson, Norman Lloyd (1993). Process capability indices. Boca Raton. ISBN 978-0-367-44989-6. OCLC 1129879631.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) Johnson, Norman Lloyd; Kotz, Samuel, eds. (1997). Leading personalities in statistical sciences : from the 17th century to the present. New York: Wiley. ISBN 0-471-16381-3. OCLC 36430730. Kotz, Samuel; Nadarajah, Saralees (2000). Extreme value distributions : theory and applications. Saralees Nadarajah. London: Imperial College Press. ISBN 1-86094-402-7. OCLC 52859163. Mari, Dominique Drouet; Kotz, Samuel (2001). Correlation and dependence. London: Imperial College Press. ISBN 978-1-86094-975-3. OCLC 262610199. Kotz, Samuel (2001). The Laplace distribution and generalizations : a revisit with applications to communications, economics, engineering, and finance. Tomasz J. Kozubowski, Krzysztof Podgórski. Boston: Birkhäuser. ISBN 0-8176-4166-1. OCLC 45583491. Kleiber, Christian; Kotz, Samuel (2003). Statistical size distributions in economics and actuarial sciences. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. ISBN 0-471-45716-7. OCLC 53121718. Kotz, Samuel; Lumelskii, Yan Petrovich; Pensky, Marianna (2003). The stress-strength model and its generalizations : theory and applications. River Edge, NJ: World Scientific. ISBN 981-256-451-9. OCLC 60716240. Kotz, Samuel (2004). Beyond beta : other continuous families of distributions with bounded support and applications. Johan René. Van Dorp. Singapore: World Scientific. ISBN 981-270-128-1. OCLC 232159983. Kotz, Samuel; Nadarajah, Saralees (2004). Linear combinations, ratios, and products of distributions with applications. Boca Raton, Fla.: Chapman & Hall/CRC. ISBN 1-58488-403-7. OCLC 56453946. Kotz, Samuel; Nadarajah, Saralees (2004). Multivariate t distributions and their applications. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-82654-3. OCLC 52541944. Dale, Andrew I.; Kotz, Samuel (2011). Arthur L Bowley : a Pioneer in Modern Statistics and Economics. Singapore: World Scientific. ISBN 978-981-283-551-2. OCLC 755591761.

See also Saralees Nadarajah (2004) A Conversation with Samuel Kotz, Statistical Science, 17, 2, 220–233. A conversation with Samuel Kotz

References

External links Samuel Kotz Archived June 13, 2010, at the Wayback Machine

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Samuel Kotz

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Samuel Kotz 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 Samuel Kotz 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 Samuel Kotz 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 Samuel Kotz

In research: Samuel Kotz 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 Samuel Kotz 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: Samuel Kotz is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1930 births, 2010 deaths, 20th-century American statisticians, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Samuel Kotz 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 Samuel Kotz in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Samuel Kotz 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.
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Frequently asked questions

What is Samuel Kotz in simple terms?

Why does Samuel Kotz 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 Samuel Kotz?

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 Samuel Kotz.