Talk:Elwyn Berlekamp

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Elwyn has written in several places that his employment at Bell Labs began in 1966, but both he and I began regular employment as Members of Technical Staff in the Mathematics and Statistics Research Center in the summer of 1967. Once I asked Elwyn about his citing "1966", and he stated that he had a summer job in the Center in 1966. (I don't consider a summer job as the start of "employment" -- but hey! he's *Elwyn*, so he's entitled to his own definitions of terms, if not his own "facts".) Center Director Henry Pollak appointed Elwyn and me as a two-person committee to plan and put on the Center's 1967 "Christmas" party. Elwyn soon revealed his incredible talent and wit -- he was a lot of fun to work with. I quickly put him on my short list of "Math Center folks I am *NOT* going to try to compete with" -- along with Ron Graham, Larry Shepp (another Putnam), Colin Mallows, and -- later -- N(iel) J. A. Sloane -- and still later, Andrew Odlysko (sp?).) Perhaps Pollak knew that I had been active in the Presbyterian church growing up, and that Elwyn's father was a (Dutch) Reform minister in the Cincinnati area when Elwyn was a teen, in one of the towns on the Kentucky side of the Ohio River. So the Christmas-party committee consisted of two guys from Florida and Kentucky -- hardly the typical Bell Labs combination.)-- William M. Boyce —Preceding unsigned comment added by WmMBoyce (talk • contribs) 08:36, 3 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The article says "As of 2008, he was the only member of the mathematics faculty who did not possess a degree in mathematics." I think this is wrong - John R. Steel's PhD is in "Logic & the Methodology of Science" and I think his undergraduate degree is in Philosophy. 76.200.132.122 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 07:16, 29 July 2010 (UTC).[reply]

Logic is purely a subset of mathematics. If all the information that has been asserted is verified, would adding something back to the article (perhaps something more precise and accurate?) improve the biography? I believe it illustrates the broad nature of his intellectual curiosity; right now this biography makes it seem like 80% of what he thinks about is math, which I believe to be untrue.TimTL (talk) 17:07, 20 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I'm Thane Plambeck

I've made what I believe are minor changes to this page that were suggested to me today by Elwyn. They are confined to the Biography section, for now, but I have similar updates for the rest of the document.

I'm an infrequent Wikipedia contributor and welcome feedback on what I've done so far, and if there are no objections or feedback I'll continue adding the rest of the material.

Tplambeck (talk) 04:37, 18 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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I should like to recapitalise the names of games in this article as noted at User talk:Michael Hardy#Uncapitalised names of games: policy? PJTraill (talk) 19:41, 4 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Done a few seconds ago PJTraill (talk) 23:25, 7 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Does anyone have an idea how to understand Berlekamp's statement "It turned out that most errors occurred in bursts affecting many fewer consecutive bytes than bits"? Taken literally, the statement is trivial -- this can't be what he meant. I have an--I think--not far-fetched idea, but for that one I have to surmise that there's a typo, most probably in "many fewer". That's why I decided to ask the public first, however small that public may be. (I have also posted this question in the Discussion section of the German Wikipedia article.) --217.80.252.237 (talk) 12:20, 13 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

In 1989, Berlekamp purchased the largest interest in a trading company named Axcom Trading Advisors. After the firm's futures trading algorithms were rewritten, Axcom's Medallion Fund had a return (in 1990) of 55%, net of all management fees and transaction costs. The fund has subsequently continued to realize annualized returns exceeding 30% under management by