In Reply to Wald

Reply to Magaret and Wald, “Autism Link to Herpes Simplex Virus 2 Antibody in Pregnancy Likely To Be Spurious”

We thank Magaret and Wald (1) for comments on our paper that allow us to clarify our experimental design and reemphasize take-home points. They raise four concerns, namely, that (i) there is no correlation between high titers of antibody to HSV and viral replication or HSV acquisition, (ii) the antibody test that we used is not quantitative, (iii) our statistical approach is flawed, and (iv) ou...

Abraham Wald

This paper grew out of a lecture presented at the 54th Session of the International Statistical Institute in Berlin, August 13 20, 2003, Schneeweiss (2003). It intends not only to outline the eventful life of Abraham Wald (1902 1950) in Austria and in the United States but also to present his extensive scientific work. In particular, the two main subjects, where he earned most of his fame, are ...

in reply to: fine needle aspiration

Biochemistry: Wald and Brown

(P being the pulsation period) could, therefore, assume any value. Moreover, if the disturbing force were periodic, a resonance of the free and forced periods would be immediately established and the amplitude of the oscillation greatly enhanced. Second-order effects, ignored in the present investigation, would thus probably soon become appreciable and could operate to destroy the resonance. Sh...

The Decentralized Wald Problem

Two detectors making independent observations must decide which one of two hypotheses is true. The decisions are coupled through a common cost function. It is shown that the detectors’ optimal decisions are characterized by thresholds which are coupled and whose computation requires the solution of two coupled sets of dynamic programming equations. An approximate computation of the thresholds i...