🚀 go-pugleaf

Steve Gardner writes:
"Imagine having to pay Newton for the 
        algorithm for calculating the derivative of a polynomial."

Actually, Sir R.A. Fisher did something somewhat analogous to that
(the publication/ academic equivalent). He invented the method of
maximum likelihood, a powerful general method for deriving all sorts
of statistical tests, and kept it a secret. He then derived one test
after another, published each one separately in the journals, and got
payment for each usage of the method, in effect, in the form of kudos
if not money.

As I recall hearing, his secret came out only at the end of his life,
or perhaps even after he was dead.

I promise you, if Newton lived today and developed the calculus,
he or his university would try to patent as much of it as possible,
probably in the form of various applications of the algorithms. Of
course Leibnetz would have been racing him for the German rights, and
Hewlett Packard would probably have hired them both to develop
patented ROMs for their calculators.

:-)

David
.

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