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Carl Friedrich Gauss
In Our Time
The Duke and the Galcian Distribution
He came up with something called the galcian distribution, which ar is basically telling you the probability that you'll be a little bit out in the time. And so he had to really invent new mathematical techniques for how you connect data to a theory that you have underlying it. He certainly got there first on a lot of things, isn't he? Er colver er.
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Speaker 3
There were a few cloudy days, i think, but eventually they looked for it, and they found it exactly where he had predicted it. And so that was sort of a big success that sourt ofe flooded round europe, that everybody knew and that he had achieved this.
Speaker 4
Why did that? Because as i read from om romyors and others note, this made it. It brought him great fame. Why did great fame consist in at that time,
Speaker 3
it was just knowledge amongst all the academics in europe and beyond, the people as well am of the work that he had done. So for example, there's a story that the duke, at this point, had to compete with the saint petersburg observatory, who wanted to steal him away. And so they the duke increased his salary at that point. And all the people in e hanover knew about this. And saying, well, why on earth ase the duke spending the money on this? A he was one.
Speaker 4
How hard was it to do what he did abut series, in plotting it when it was behind the sun for luti? Well,
Speaker 3
so he had to really invent new mathematical techniques for how you connect data to a theory that you have underlying it. Am and that made him to think about not just the perfect case, but actually experimentalists and the fact that they have errors. So i you get a hundred people to measure the length of a race, they will get slightly different times. And he came up with something called the galcian distribution, which ar is basically telling you the probability that you'll be a little bit out in the time, or the probability that someone will be a long way out in the time. And that is basically, to this day, our under anding of errors and how they occur in experiments across a lal of science. He certainly got there first on a lot of things, isn't he? Er
Speaker 4
colver er.
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