John Craig

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the Scottish mathematician. For the Canadian children's author, see John Craig (author). For the secret agent of James Munro's books, see John Craig (fictional agent).

John Craig (1663–October 11, 1731) was a Scottish mathematician. Born in Dumfries and educated at the University of Edinburgh, he moved to England and became a vicar in the Church of England.

A friend of Newton, he wrote several minor works about the new calculus. He is mainly known for his book Theologiae Christianae Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Christian Theology), published in 1698.

In the aforementioned book, Craig presents a formula that describes how the probability of a historical event depends on the number of primary witnesses, on the chain of transmission through secondary witnesses, on the elapsed time and on the spatial distance. Using this formula, Craig derived that the probability of the story of Jesus would reach 0 in the year 3150. This year he interpreted as the Second Coming of Christ because of verse 18:8 in the Gospel of Luke.

His work was poorly received. Several later mathematicians complained about his imprecise use of probability and the unsupported derivation of his formula. Stephen Stigler, in his 1999 book (see references, below) gave a more favorable interpretation, pointing out that some of Craig's reasoning can be justified if his "probability" is interpreted as the log-likelihood ratio.

[edit] References

Stigler, Stephen M. (1999). Statistics on the Table. Harvard University Press. (chapter 13)

Luke 18:8 reads "I tell you that He will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will He really find faith on the earth?" (New King James Version)