Irving John "I.J." Good was a British statistician who worked as a cryptographer at Bletchley Park.

He was born as Isidore Jacob Gudak to a Jewish family in London. In his publications he was called I. J. Good. He studied mathematics at Jesus College, Cambridge, graduating in 1938. He did research work under G. H. Hardy and Besicovitch, before moving to Bletchley Park in 1941 on completing his doctorate.

At Bletchley Park, he was initially in Hut 8 under the supervision of Alan Turing; he worked with Donald Michie in Max Newman's group on the Fish ciphers, leading to the development of the Colossus computer. After the war ended, he worked at the University of Manchester and then at GCHQ until 1959. He then had a variety of defence, consulting and academic positions. He was a prolific author of technical papers.

In 1967 he moved to the United States, where he was appointed a research professor of statistics at Virginia Tech. In 1969 he was appointed a University Distinguished Professor at Virginia Tech, and in 2004 Emeritus University Distinguished Professor.

I. J. Good's vanity car license plate, hinting at his spylike wartime work, was "007 IJG". He was known for his work on Bayesian statistics. He published a number of books on probability theory. He played chess to county standard, and helped to popularise Go, an Asian boardgame, through a 1965 article in New Scientist (he had learned the rules from Turing). In 1965, he described a concept similar to today's meaning of technological singularity, in that it included in it the advent of superhuman intelligence:

"Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an 'intelligence explosion,' and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make." ^[1]

In a 1988 article for Statistical Science, I. J. Good discusses the interface between the philosophy of science and statistics. In the article, he introduces the subject with review mainly of the writings of I. J. Good, "because I have read them all carefully."^[2] Good later delved into differential algebra research; Joseph Ritt (Ritt theorem) was one of Good's many students.

Death

He died on 5 April 2009 in Radford, Virginia, aged 92.^[3]

See also

• Good-Turing frequency estimation

References

1. ^ Good, I. J. (1965). "Speculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent Machine" Advances in Computers, Vol. 6.
2. ^ Good, I. J. (1988). "The Interface Between Statistics and Philosophy of Science" Statistical Science, Vol. 3, No. 4, pp. 386–397.
3. ^ Virginia Tech news release of Good's death

External links

• Good's web page at Virginia Tech
• Biography focusing on Good's role in the history of computing
• Project Euclid An interview with Good can be downloaded from here
• VT Image Base Photographs