I. J. Good

Infobox Person


image_size = 150px
name = I. J. Good
birth_date = birth date and age|1916|12|9|df=y
birth_place = flagicon|UK London, England
death_date =
death_place =
occupation = Statistician and cryptographer

Irving John (Jack) Good (born 9 December 1916) is a British statistician who worked also as a cryptographer at Bletchley Park. He was born Isidore Jacob Gudak to a Jewish family in London. In his publications he is called I. J. Good. He read mathematics at Jesus College, Cambridge, graduating in 1938. He did research work under G. H. Hardy and Besicovitch, before moving to Bletchley Park in 1941 on completing his doctorate.

At Bletchley Park, he was initially in Hut 8 under the supervision of Alan Turing; he worked with Donald Michie in Max Newman's group on the Fish ciphers, leading to the development of the Colossus computer. After the war ended, he worked at the University of Manchester and then at GCHQ until 1959. He then had a variety of defence, consulting and academic positions. He was a prolific author of technical papers. In 1967 he moved to the United States, where he was appointed a research professor of statistics at Virginia Tech. In 1969 he was appointed a University Distinguished Professor at Virginia Tech, and in 2004 Emeritus University Distinguished Professor.

I. J. Good's "vanity" car license plate, hinting at his spylike wartime work, is "007 IJG". He is known for his work on Bayesian statistics. He has published a number of books on probability theory. He played chess to county standard, and helped to popularise Go, an Asian boardgame, through a 1965 article in New Scientist (he had learned the rules from Turing). In 1965, he described a concept similar to today's meaning of technological singularity, in that it included in it the advent of superhuman intelligence:

: "Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an 'intelligence explosion,' and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make." "

In a 1988 article for "Statistical Science", I. J. Good discusses the interface between the philosophy of science and statistics. In the article, he introduces the subject with review mainly of the writings of I. J. Good, "because I have read them all carefully." [ Good, I. J. (1988). [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0883-4237%28198811%293%3A4%3C386%3ATIBSAP%3E2.0.CO%3B2-I "The Interface Between Statistics and Philosophy of Science."] "Statistical Science", Vol. 3, No. 4, pp. 386–397.]

He later delved into differential algebra research; Ritt (from Ritt's Algorithm fame) was a student of his.

ee also

* Good-Turing frequency estimation

References

External links

* [http://www.stat.vt.edu/facstaff/ijgood.html Good's web page] at Virginia Tech.
* [http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/Good.html Biography] focusing on Good's role in the history of computing
* [http://projecteuclid.org/Dienst/UI/1.0/Summarize/euclid.ss/1032209661 Project Euclid] An interview with Good can be downloaded from here.
* [http://imagebase.lib.vt.edu/browse.php?folio_ID=/va/fac/good VT Image Base] Photographs.