sábado, 6 de octubre de 2012

Duncan Luce (1925-2012): in memoriam

(Powerpoint by Jean-Claude Falmagne in the University of Navarra,
 remembering to Duncan Luce (August, 30, 2012). (Photo by Carlos Pelta)


Duncan Luce died August, 11, 2012, in Irvine (USA). Professor Luce has been one of the most renowned mathematical psychologists in 20th century. Pioneer of the quantitative formalization in Psychology and of the rigorous analysis of the Theory of Measurement, I remember the deep impact of his book Individual choice behavior on my youhtful mind. It was fascinating to see how Luce´s version of the principle of the independence of irrelevant alternatives was exploited in new and surprising directions. Choice probabilities for different sets of alternatives satisfying the principle of independence of irrelevant alternatives might  be consistently defined independently of the actual choice set.
I was lucky to shake hands with Professor Luce in the the "2011 Meeting of the European Mathematical Psychology Group" at  Paris one year ago. Requiescat in pace, Professor Luce.