Friedman on Markowitz

From: Mark Taranto
Affiliation:
Address: MarkTaranto@comcast.net
Date: 28 Nov 2006
Time: 10:31:06

Comments

I'd never heard the comment about Friedman at Markowitz' dissertation defense. Interesting story. I wonder how serious Friedman was -- did he really think it wasn't economics, or did he just want to push Markowitz to explain the connection. Either way, the reports are that the decision to pass him did not take much time. I wonder what Friedman thought about Economics prizes going to game theorists and econometricians. .................. I've heard some real horror stories about defenses. The worst was a University of Minnesota math student. The story is that one of the people on his committee came in late, walked to the chalk board where he wrote for a few minutes. He then turned around and said "The central theorem in the dissertation id false. Here is a counterexample." Then he walked out. There has to be a better way to do it. On the flip side, there is Wittgenstein's defense. At the end of it, he walked from the room, threw his arms over the shoulders of his committee (GE Moore and Bertrand Russell) and said "Don't worry about it -- I know that you will never understand it. .................... I never had to worry about that. For some reason, Berkeley is the only major university I know of where you don't have to defend your thesis. I just needed three signatures from my committee. Granted, my oral preliminary exam was, essentially, a defense of my first chapter.

Disclaimer