Transcript

But they courted me to come to Harvard, not as a member of the Business School, because I wouldn't have come, but as a joint appointment between the Business School and a newly developed Department of Statistics, led by Fred Mosteller.

Well, in order to woo me, they sent Bert Fox, who was the head of the Division of Research, to New York to take my wife and myself out to a fancy Italian restaurant to talk about the merits of this joint appointment.  And inadvertently I let it be known that Columbia, alas, didn't have a business school.  Of course, it did, but I didn't even know it had a business school, being there five years.  So that showed my interest in business.

I would not have come to Harvard as an appointment solely with the Business School, because the Business School didn't have a reputation as a mathematical, analytical place.  But being the third-ranking member of a new Department of Statistics that featured work with the social sciences, where the appointments were Fred Mosteller and Cochran, both whom I admire very much, I decided that I would come and spend my time mostly in the Statistics Department, and fill the requirements I needed for the Business School....

Well, of course, the way I came here, I wanted to know something about the Business School.  And I decided that I would go to MBA classes and learn a little about what they were.  And I was absolutely turned on, because this reminded me of what I did in the R.L.  Moore.  It was every problem, problem after problem I thought was a decision problem.  I thought that's what I was about to learn about and research about, and I didn't know how to solve any of these problems.