Ladislaus Bortkiewicz

Ladislaus Josephovich Bortkiewicz (August 7, 1868 - July 15, 1931) was a Russian economist and statistician of Polish descent.

Related Topics:
August 7 - 1868 - July 15 - 1931 - Russian - Economist - Statistician - Polish

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Bortkiewicz was born in St. Petersburg, Imperial Russia (today Russia) where he graduated in law in 1890.

Related Topics:
St. Petersburg - Imperial Russia - Russia - 1890

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In 1898 he published a book about the Poisson distribution, titled The Law of Small Numbers. In this book he first noted that events with low frequency in a large population follow a Poisson distribution even when the probabilities of the events varied. It was that book that made the Prussian cavalry horse-kick data famous. The data give the number of soldiers killed by being kicked by a horse each year in each of 14 cavalry corps over a 20-year period. Bortkiewicz showed that those numbers follow a Poisson distribution. The book also examined data on child-suicides. Some historians of mathematics have argued that the Poisson distribution should have been named the "Bortkiewicz distribution."

Related Topics:
1898 - Poisson distribution

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In political economy, Bortkiewicz is important for his analysis of Marx's reproduction schema in the last two volumes of Capital. Bortkiewicz identified a transformation problem in Marx's work which, if proven, would profoundly undermine Marx's claim to have provided a consistent account of capitalist economics. This work provided the basis of major elaborations by Joseph Schumpeter and Paul Sweezy among others.

Related Topics:
Capital - Transformation problem - Joseph Schumpeter - Paul Sweezy

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Bortkiewicz died in Berlin, Germany.

Related Topics:
Berlin - Germany

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