My Idols (Part 2)

Once I was telling my friend that I cannot imagine that my future husband is a Keynesian, since I am a supporter of Milton Friedman's monetarist theory. However, this does not stop John Maynard Keynes from being one of my most respected economists.

When I was reading the book The Lady Tasting Tea on the flight from Detroit to St Louis, the footnote of the chapter "Hypothesis Testing" says the following:

There is a kind of misonomy involved with Keynes. Most people would think of him as an economist, the founder of the Keynesian school of economics, dealing with the ways in which government manipulation of monetary policy can influence the course of the economy. However, Keynes had his Ph.D. in philosophy; and his Ph.D. dissertation, published in 1921 as A Treatise on Probability, is a major monument in the development of the philosophical foundations behind the use of mathematical statistics.

I won't say that surprises me--after reading the stories of so many famous economists and their contribution to statistics, or I would rather say the contributions to economics by statisticians, it is expected that great economists--of course include John Maynard Keynes to be a great statistician as well... It is not a surprise, it just made me respect Keynes even more... Yep, and as I mentioned in the two entries before, what right do I have to criticize the Keynesian's theory when I am just a mere consumer of economic theories?

Labels: eeks ECON, Sexy Stats

posted by panda xuan @ 7:44 PM