Thorvald Nicolai Thiele (24 December 1838 – 26 September 1910) was a

Danish Danish may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the country of Denmark People * A national or citizen of Denmark, also called a "Dane," see Demographics of Denmark * Culture of Denmark * Danish people or Danes, people with a Danish a ...

astronomer An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses their studies on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. They observe astronomical objects such as stars, planets, moons, comets and galaxies – in either ...

and director of the

Copenhagen Observatory Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...

. He was also an actuary and

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change. History On ...

, most notable for his work in statistics, interpolation and the

three-body problem In physics and classical mechanics, the three-body problem is the problem of taking the initial positions and velocities (or momenta) of three point masses and solving for their subsequent motion according to Newton's laws of motion and Newton's ...

. Thiele made notable contributions to the statistical study of random time series and introduced the

cumulant In probability theory and statistics, the cumulants of a probability distribution are a set of quantities that provide an alternative to the '' moments'' of the distribution. Any two probability distributions whose moments are identical will have ...

s and

likelihood function The likelihood function (often simply called the likelihood) represents the probability of random variable realizations conditional on particular values of the statistical parameters. Thus, when evaluated on a given sample, the likelihood funct ...

s, and was considered to be one of the greatest statisticians of all time by

Ronald Fisher Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher (17 February 1890 – 29 July 1962) was a British polymath who was active as a mathematician, statistician, biologist, geneticist, and academic. For his work in statistics, he has been described as "a genius who ...

. In the early 1900s he also developed and proposed a generalisation of approval voting to multiple winner elections called

sequential proportional approval voting Sequential proportional approval voting (SPAV) or reweighted approval voting (RAV) is an electoral system that extends the concept of approval voting to a multiple winner election. It is a simplified version of proportional approval voting. Pr ...

, which was briefly used for party lists in Sweden when proportional representation was introduced in 1909. Thiele also was a founder and Mathematical Director of the Hafnia Insurance Company and led the founding of the Danish Society of Actuaries. It was through his

insurance Insurance is a means of protection from financial loss in which, in exchange for a fee, a party agrees to compensate another party in the event of a certain loss, damage, or injury. It is a form of risk management, primarily used to hedge ...

work that he came into contact with fellow mathematician

Jørgen Pedersen Gram Jørgen Pedersen Gram (27 June 1850 – 29 April 1916) was a Danish actuary and mathematician who was born in Nustrup, Duchy of Schleswig, Denmark and died in Copenhagen, Denmark. Important papers of his include ''On series expansions determi ...

. Thiele was the father of astronomer

Holger Thiele Holger Thiele (September 25, 1878 – June 5, 1946) was a Danish American astronomer and discoverer of minor planets and comets. He was the son of Thorvald Nicolai Thiele (1838–1910), the noted Danish astronomer, actuary and mathematician, af ...

. The main-belt asteroids

843 Nicolaia 843 Nicolaia is a main-belt asteroid An asteroid is a minor planet of the inner Solar System. Sizes and shapes of asteroids vary significantly, ranging from 1-meter rocks to a dwarf planet almost 1000 km in diameter; they are rocky, met ...

(discovered by his son Holger) and

1586 Thiele Events * January 18 – The 7.9 Tenshō earthquake strikes the Chubu region of Japan, triggering a tsunami and causing at least 8,000 deaths. * June 16 – The deposed and imprisoned Mary, Queen of Scots, recognizes Philip II of ...

are named in his honour.

Selected publications

* * *

Notes and references

Notes

References

* **1. Introduction to Thiele, S. L. Lauritzen **2. On the application of the method of least squares to some cases, in which a combination of certain types of inhomogeneous random sources of errors gives these a 'systematic' character, T. N. Thiele **3.

analysis in 1880: a discussion of contributions made by T. N. Thiele, S. L. Lauritzen **4. The general theory of observations: calculus of probability and the method of least squares, T. N. Thiele **5. T. N. Thiele's contributions to statistics, A. Hald **6. On the halfinvariants in the theory of observations, T. N. Thiele **7. The early history of

cumulants In probability theory and statistics, the cumulants of a probability distribution are a set of quantities that provide an alternative to the '' moments'' of the distribution. Any two probability distributions whose moments are identical will have ...

and the

, A. Hald **8. Epilogue, S. L. Lauritzen * *

Anders Hald Anders Hjorth Hald (3 July 1913 – 11 November 2007) was a Danish statistician. He was a professor at the University of Copenhagen from 1960 to 1982. While a professor, he did research in industrial quality control and other areas, and also auth ...

. "T. N. Thiele's contributions to statistics" ''International Statistical Review'' volume 49, (1981), number 1: 1—20. *

. "The early history of the cumulants and the Gram–Charlier series" ''International Statistical Review'' volume 68 (2000), number 2,´: 137—153.
Steffen L. Lauritzen
"Time series analysis in 1880. A discussion of contributions made by T.N. Thiele". ''International Statistical Review'' 49, 1981, 319–333.
Steffen L. Lauritzen ''Aspects of T. N. Thiele’s Contributions to Statistics''
''Bulletin of the International Statistical Institute'', 58, 27–30, 1999.

External links

*
Steffen L. Lauritzen

Aspects of T. N. Thiele’s Contributions to Statistics,"
''Bulletin of the International Statistical Institute'', 58 (1999): 27–30. {{DEFAULTSORT:Thiele, Thorvald N. 1838 births 1910 deaths 20th-century Danish astronomers 19th-century Danish astronomers 19th-century Danish mathematicians 20th-century Danish mathematicians Danish statisticians Danish actuaries Rectors of the University of Copenhagen

Selected publications

See also

Notes and references

Notes

References

External links