Comment by parsimo2010 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by parsimo2010 | Hacker News Reader

For those of you who aren't statisticians: D. R. Cox was an absolute legend. Revolutionized the field of survival statistics with his proportional hazards model. Shares 50% of the credit for the Box-Cox test and all the giggles it generates in undergrads. Invented the Cox point process. A zillion other things. His contributions were great and he will be missed.

Edit: I have to edit my comment because calling him an absolute legend doesn't feel like it was doing him justice. I'm not kidding, I don't think I can state how important he was. He's in the top 5 statisticians of all time- everyone's ranking of top 5 varies but Cox is in the top 5 on almost every statistician's list- and will probably still be top 5 until the future is perfectly predictable and there is no need for probability and statistics anymore. There may never be someone that is as productive and with as impactful discoveries. Sure, there will be people that write more papers, but nobody will write as many great papers. Sure, there are other great statisticians that have a few great discoveries named after them, but there are none that have as many great discoveries named after them.

I remember thinking “isn’t it odd that there were several statisticians named Cox with important work?” It didn’t even occur to me that so many fundamentals, over literally decades from the 50s to the 00s, and even popular textbooks like his one on applied statistics, could ALL be from one mind. Amazing.

How can we be sure that people with last name Cox aren't just 200% more likely to provide significant contributions to the field of statistics?

Because David Cox would have written a paper about it if so.

Gertrude Cox is actually also a famous statistician with considerable contributions to the field, so you weren't entirely wrong, but of course David is (was) almost peerless in living memory.

It is kind of crazy how these machine learning people are more famous in the general audience compared to the greats like Cox.

I read his principles of statistics books and I would recommend it to anyone doing data analysis.

Impressive.

The information age has advanced so rapidly, we hardly realize that almost everything that had been invented, was by people just passed or still alive. When I was in college, Claude Shannon still attended information theory seminars. He invented all of digital communications (or nearly so).

I really wish we had a way to keep legends alive longer and help them be happy, healthy, and contribute more to society.

Why does one have to be a legend for you to wish that for them?

Because they are useful!

I think it’s kind of beautiful that we all have our limited times to make an impact. We bring our perspectives and use our context to try to move civilization to a more optimal place. Then once we’ve spent all our ideas our perspectives can afford, we give way to the next group of minds. Like an old oak falling under the weight of snow opens room in the canopy for new growth and the decomposing wood provides nutrients for saplings; the absence of old arguments invite new ideas and the theory we leave gives the building blocks.

I don't know if I'd call it beautiful or desirable over a world where we live forever and develop robust mechanisms to ensure our perspectives are forced to change and adapt instead of calcifying and power cannot entrench itself, but I agree that I can appreciate the fact that although people like Dr. Cox and Hans Rosling die, so do tyrants and those irrationally stubborn

This i fear. People who dont like the idea of immortal enforce others to be so. I am not saying the op is of this opinion, its my obsevation.

He lived till 98. At some age cut-off point, shouldn't we be thankful that he lived so long?.

If you consider the first 25 as useless/building stage of life and the next 35 as contributing/productive part. This man lived another 38 years after that (an entire new useful life span for an average human).

> If you consider the first 25 as useless/building stage of life and the next 35 as contributing/productive part.

I never thought I’d read a comment where someone just called their youth worthless. Aside from being reductionist and utterly devoid of empathy, there’s an entire industry built around life extension that disagrees with you.

Not to mention implying that people over 60 aren't contributing or productive.

There are multiple philosophical points.

For someone who lives/interacts with David Cox everyday, the loss is immense.

But OP was referring to 'loss to the society'. When you bring in 'loss to the society', then it is inevitable that you measure their net-positive-contributions-to-society.

Unless you are an outlier (<0.0001%), 25 and below is usually where you are sucking away resources without contributing back (easily measured by net worth or artifacts or offsprings). 25 - 60 is when you are peak contribution (offsprings, net worth, artifacts), after 60 most stop producing (offsprings, artifacts, wealth accumulation). Yes there are outliers to these too.

Now to the controversial. Yes, offspring creation is (the ultimate) productive service to the society. It's the *only* way to keep humanity not going extinct.

Thought experiment: Tomorrow if everyone decides to stop offsprings, humanity is guaranteed to be extinct in 100 years. However, if everyone decides to have a baby or two, humanity will chug along for at least quite a few hundred years (Climate Change is not going to make us extinct)

One might hope that his last act was to calculate the chance of his reaching 99.

Only if we have a way to keep narcissistic terrors from using said method to prolong their awfulness.

Survival analysis was my first great methodological love. Dr. Cox was an absolute giant in the field.

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