Math Is Better Than the Brigadier's Girlfriend | Episode 15 | Everything is Everything

One of the giants of 20th century statistics died a few weeks ago. He was Indian. His name was CR Rao, and he was the finest product of the Bengal Renaissance.

Welcome to Episode 15 of Everything is Everything, a weekly podcast hosted by Amit Varma and Ajay Shah.

In this episode, Ajay tells us the story of his great hero, CR Rao. The love for statistics is infectious, and so is the storytelling, as Amit follows up with stories about Abraham Wald, PC Mahalanobis, JBS Haldane, the Bharat Sadhu Samaaj and the urbane finance minister who did WHAT to a tree? Magnificent entertainment. Paisa wasool. Kindly watch, and like, and subscribe!

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

00:00 Teaser and packaging
01:00 Introduction: The Brigadier's Girlfriend
06:44 Chapter 1: We Will Not Let Down CR Rao
29:42 Chapter 2: The Unusual Mind of Abraham Wald
35:31 Chapter 3: How Many Lives Does It Take to Kill a Factory?
40:53 Chapter 4: Professor Mahalanobis
48:50 Chapter 5: The Sadhus and the Planning Commission
50:51 Chapter 6: Chintaman Deshmukh, the Sanskari Romantic
55:05 Chapter 7: Amit's Recco
56:16 Chapter 8: Ajay's Recco

USEFUL RESOURCES:

1. Amit on Twitter:   / amitvarma  
2. Ajay on Twitter:   / ajay_shah  
3. The Seen and the Unseen -- Amit's audio podcast: https://seenunseen.in/
(Also on all podcast apps. And YouTube, though less than 1% of listens come from here: https://www.youtube.com/@TheSeenAndTh...)
4. Ajay's organisation, XKDR Forum, on YouTube:    / @xkdr  
5. In Service of the Republic -- Vijay Kelkar and Ajay Shah: https://amzn.eu/d/hwGILb3
6. The Art of Clear Writing -- Amit's writing course: https://indiauncut.com/clear-writing/
7. Calyampudi Radhakrishna Rao -- A brief Bio: https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk...
8. The German Tank Problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_...
9. The German Tank Problem explained by NStatum:    • The German Tank Problem: How the Alli...  
10. The Cramér–Rao Lower Bound: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cram%C3...
11. The Cramer-Rao Lower Bound – Derivation and Examples: https://www.hbs.edu/research-computin...
12. The Rao-Blackwell Theorem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rao%E2%...
13. Examples of the Rao-Blackwell Theorem: http://www.statslab.cam.ac.uk/~rrw1/s...
14. The Tamilian gentleman who took on the world -- Amit Varma: https://www.espn.in/chess/story/_/id/...
15. Why Talent Comes in Clusters -- Episode 8 of Everything is Everything:    • Why Talent Comes in Clusters | Episod...  
16. Why Freedom Matters -- Episode 10 of Everything is Everything:    • Why Freedom Matters | Episode 10 | Ev...  
17. The Julia Programming Language: https://julialang.org/
18. Viral Shah on Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?...
19. CRRao: A Julia Statistical Modeling Package for All -- Sourish Das:   / crrao-julia-statistical-modeling-package-a...  
20. CRRao on GitHub: https://github.com/xKDR/CRRao.jl/blob...
21. Documentation and Examples of CRRao: https://xkdr.github.io/CRRao.jl/dev/
22. Doing applied statistics research in Julia -- Ajay Shah:    • Doing applied statistics research in ...  
23. Abraham Wald on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham...
24. Don't Get Fooled by Success (2005) -- Amit Varma: https://web.archive.org/web/201707080...
25. Two great investment strategies (1998) -- Ajay Shah: https://www.mayin.org/ajayshah/MEDIA/...
26. Planning Democracy -- Nikhil Menon: https://amzn.eu/d/4BT92IK
27. The History of the Planning Commission — Episode 306 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Nikhil Menon):    • Ep 306: The History of the Planning C...  
28. The Art of Narrative Nonfiction (+ JBS Haldane) — Episode 183 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Samanth Subramanian):    • Ep 183: The Art of Narrative Nonficti...  
29. A Dominant Character -- Samanth Subramanian: https://amzn.eu/d/2MyOKye
30. Autoerotic Asphyxiation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erotic_... (Do not try this at home.)
31. Chintaman and I -- Durgabai Deshmukh: https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.d...
32. The Great Mental Models -- Shane Parrish: https://amzn.eu/d/eLR9KGU
33. The Knowledge Project Podcast: https://fs.blog/knowledge-project-pod...
34. The Lady Tasting Tea -- David Salsburg: https://amzn.eu/d/5e6sAMY

Produced by Amit Varma and Ajay Shah
Shot by Vartika Singh:    / @vartikasingh7  
Edited by Nomsita MS Haritashya:   / nomsitaharitashya  
Thanks to Gaurav Chintamani for helping with sound:   / gaurav_chintamani  
Chapter images by Simahina:   / i_am_simahina