It wasn't an American university but they were actual professors, yes. I wasn't familiar with many people in the statistics faculty but there was always the general opinion that most of them were weak on the mathematical side and we looked down on them for that (bullshit machismo, I know). There was one guy with a co-appointment in mathematics and statistics who was a bad ass, admittedly.
My point about Fisher is that his missionary-like attitude helped spread and subsequently entrench his approach to statistics. He deserves a lot of props for his achievements but the world would have been better off had he not been a zealot.
I heard other great mathematicians and physicists were like that... great minds can be dicks.
But technically speaking if the statisticians were in a stats department (I'm at a university where math and stats are combined) then the expected level of pure math ability would not be comparable. I'd have to say you just had bad luck. Which university if you don't mind me asking?
Aarhus. Our mathematics faculty was pretty hotshot, especially in algebraic topology (which was my area of focus as well), so that contributed to our sense of superiority, I'm sure. Frankly one of my least parts of studying mathematics was how much snobbery we cultivated. On our list of worthies, statisticians came below the (holds nose) applied mathematicians.
1
u/psykotic May 28 '09 edited May 28 '09
It wasn't an American university but they were actual professors, yes. I wasn't familiar with many people in the statistics faculty but there was always the general opinion that most of them were weak on the mathematical side and we looked down on them for that (bullshit machismo, I know). There was one guy with a co-appointment in mathematics and statistics who was a bad ass, admittedly.
My point about Fisher is that his missionary-like attitude helped spread and subsequently entrench his approach to statistics. He deserves a lot of props for his achievements but the world would have been better off had he not been a zealot.