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Andreas N. Philippou

Publications and source records attributed to Andreas N. Philippou.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

Probability and statistics in Greece

Official statistics in Greece started as early as 1828 with the first Census. A department of statistics was established in 1861, and the General Statistical Service of Greece was founded in 1925. It was reformed to become the National Statistical Service of Greece in 1953, which was then replaced by the independent Hellenic Statistical Authority in 2010. The science of probability and statistics was essentially introduced in the late 1960s and before 1982. Seven chairs, plus were established in probability and statistics, albeit with various names, at the four Greek universities and ASOEE, which existed then, and six aspirants were elected to the post of professor of the respective chair. Since 1982, when the law abolished the archaic system of chairs, more than 200 PhD holders in probability and statistics or related subjects have been elected or promoted to the new ranks of professor, associate professor, and assistant professor at the 25 public Greek universities, which exist today. Several of these professors or associate professors have been elected to the post of Rector or Vice Rector. Now, probability and statistics, as well as related subjects, are very well treated in Greece. Today, the Greek contribution to these specialties is internationally recognized

math.HO↗

Why Do Polls Fail? The Case of Four US Presidential Elections, Brexit, and Two India General Elections

One of the most widely known and important applications of probability and statistics is scientific polling to forecast election results. In 1936, Gallup predicted correctly the victory of Roosevelt over Landon in the US presidential election, using scientific sampling of a few thousand persons, whereas the Literary Digest failed using 2.4 million answers to 10 million mailed questionnaires to automobile and telephone owners. Since then, polls have grown to be a multibillion flourishing and very influential and important industry, spreading around the world. Polls have mostly been accurate in the US presidential elections, with a few exceptions. Their two most notable failures were their wrong predictions of the US 1948 and 2016 presidential elections. Most polls failed too in the 2016 UK Referendum, in the 2014 and 2019 India Lok Sabha elections, and in the US 2020 presidential election, even though in the latter three they did predict the winner. We discuss these polls in the present paper. The failure in 1948 was due to non-random sampling. In 2016 and 2020 it was mainly due to the problem of non-response and possible biases of the pollsters. In 2014 and 2019 it was due to non-response and political biases of the polling agencies and news outlets that produced the polls.

stat.AP↗

A note on the modes of the negative binomial distribution of order k, type I

Upper and lower bounds are derived for the mode(s) of the negative binomial distribution of order k, type I, with parameters r and p, which are employed to establish an explicit formula for the mode(s) in terms of r and k when p equals 0.5. It is also shown as a direct consequence of the upper bound alone that the mode is k when r equals 1. The derivation of the bounds is based on a known recurrence relation satisfied by the probability mass function of the distribution.

math.PR↗

A Note on the Modes of the Poisson Distribution of Order k

It is shown that for any positive integer k and positive parameter lambda less than 2/k(k+1), the Poisson distribution of order k with parameter lambda has a unique mode, 0. In addition, the Poisson distribution of order 2 has a unique mode, 0, if lambda is less than -1 plus the square root of 3. It has two modes, 0 and 2, if lambda is equal to -1 plus the square root of 3, and it has a unique mode, 2, if lambda is greater than -1 plus the square root of 3 and less than 1.

math.PR↗

On the modes of the Poisson distribution of order k

Sharp upper and lower bounds are established for the modes of the Poisson distribution of order k. The lower bound established in this paper is better than the previously established lower bound. In addition, for k = 2, 3, 4, 5, a recent conjecture is presently proved solving partially an open problem since 1983.

math.ST↗