Re: st: RE: fitting a gompertz curve, not in the context of survival analysis

[Dan Waldo <dan_waldo@yahoo.com>]

Thank you, Nick. The absence of specificity regarding second order conditions for stability is not important, and the very absence of data attests to the purity of thought. See, for example:

Luckett, D.G. (1971) The Inverted Tetrahexahedron: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of the ICBM. The Journal of Political Economy 79(4): 933-937.  (Jul.-Aug., 1971)
http://www.jstor.org/stable/1830846 

Dan

> 
> Date: Sun, 31 May 2009 12:48:40 +0100
> From: "Nick Cox" <n.j.cox@durham.ac.uk>
> Subject: RE: st: RE: fitting a gompertz curve, not in the
> context of survival analysis
> 
> Thomas Love Peacock made some of his characters discuss
> this matter in
> his novel "Crotchet Castle" (Hookham, London, 1831). 
> 
> The entire text is easily accessible at e.g.
> http://www.thomaslovepeacock.net/Crotchet.html
> 
> Peacock unerringly identified several key issues in your
> research,
> including the question of time origin. If you want to
> object that he
> supplied neither data nor precise equations that doesn't
> distinguish him
> from many of the economists who have discussed this matter
> since. On the
> other hand, the allusion to modelling is naturally
> prescient. 
> 
> In this novel of ideas, Mr Mac Quedy is, according to
> various scholars,
> based mostly on the Scottish economist J.R. McCulloch.
> Quedy is also
> identified as a play on QED, quod erat demonstrandum, i.e.
> on the a
> priori or deductive style of economising. 
> 
> What follows is an exact quotation from that URL, except
> that I have
> corrected "desert" to "dessert". (The Project Gutenberg
> copy is correct
> on that point.) Dr Folliott's reference to "your nation"
> underlines that
> he is English and Mr Mac Quedy is Scottish. As an
> Englishman with some
> Welsh antecedents married to a Scot, I want to underline
> that that
> difference is important. 



      
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