Naming Inverarity, Pierce: not to distract

Brett g Porter BgPorter at acm.org
Fri Nov 1 12:46:06 CST 1996


<deletia...>>
>2) Pierce: From B.F. Pierce, founder of information theory

Almost. B.F. Pierce was "Hawkeye" in M*A*S*H. Information theory was
developed by one Claude Shannon, in a seminal paper in the 40's(?), and
later in a book co-written with Weaver. *J.R.* Pierce was Shannon's boss at
Bell Labs, and wrote an excellent book on information theory, currently
available from Dover Press under the title "Symbols, Signals, and Noise".
However, he had no direct hand in developing the theory, other than
supporting & disseminating Shannon's work.


>4)Also, a play on "inverse rarity", which is a kind of stamp
>whose misprint makes it worth much money to collectors

Is there a citation from the philately lit to back this up? I read
somewhere (Lot 49 companion?) that this is a canard....

<deletia...>

Just my little trivial bit (pun intended).
BgP

// Today's oblique strategy (Courtesy Brian Eno & Peter Schmidt):
// What mistakes did you make last time?
//
// BgPorter at acm.org



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