Leo Törnqvist
Encyclopedia
Leo Waldemar Törnqvist was one of the first professors of statistics in Finland. He taught at the University of Helsinki
from 1950 to 1974, and developed techniques that are used in official price and productivity statistics.
Tornqvist developed an approach to creating weighted price indexes across discrete time periods using weighted averages of growth rates in prices where the weights were quantity averages across the two periods. These Tornqvist index
es are used in official price and productivity statistics in many countries.
Each year the Finnish Statistical Society gives a Leo Törnqvist Award for an outstanding master's degree thesis in statistics.
Törnqvist bought a Commodore VIC-20
about 1981 and asked his daughter Anna's son, Linus Torvalds
, to help him program it. Törnqvist wrote out BASIC
language programs, and grandson Linus, aged about eleven, typed them in. "He wanted me to share in the experience [and] get me interested in math," wrote Torvalds later. These were Linus's first programming experiences. Ten years later, Torvalds began to write the Linux kernel
.
University of Helsinki
The University of Helsinki is a university located in Helsinki, Finland since 1829, but was founded in the city of Turku in 1640 as The Royal Academy of Turku, at that time part of the Swedish Empire. It is the oldest and largest university in Finland with the widest range of disciplines available...
from 1950 to 1974, and developed techniques that are used in official price and productivity statistics.
Tornqvist developed an approach to creating weighted price indexes across discrete time periods using weighted averages of growth rates in prices where the weights were quantity averages across the two periods. These Tornqvist index
Tornqvist index
In economics the Törnqvist index is a price or quantity index. Using price and quantity data, a Tornqvist index is a discrete approximation to a continuous Divisia index. A Divisia index is a weighted sum of the growth rates of the various components, where the weights are the component's shares in...
es are used in official price and productivity statistics in many countries.
Each year the Finnish Statistical Society gives a Leo Törnqvist Award for an outstanding master's degree thesis in statistics.
Törnqvist bought a Commodore VIC-20
Commodore VIC-20
The VIC-20 is an 8-bit home computer which was sold by Commodore Business Machines. The VIC-20 was announced in 1980, roughly three years after Commodore's first personal computer, the PET...
about 1981 and asked his daughter Anna's son, Linus Torvalds
Linus Torvalds
Linus Benedict Torvalds is a Finnish software engineer and hacker, best known for having initiated the development of the open source Linux kernel. He later became the chief architect of the Linux kernel, and now acts as the project's coordinator...
, to help him program it. Törnqvist wrote out BASIC
BASIC
BASIC is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages whose design philosophy emphasizes ease of use - the name is an acronym from Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code....
language programs, and grandson Linus, aged about eleven, typed them in. "He wanted me to share in the experience [and] get me interested in math," wrote Torvalds later. These were Linus's first programming experiences. Ten years later, Torvalds began to write the Linux kernel
Linux kernel
The Linux kernel is an operating system kernel used by the Linux family of Unix-like operating systems. It is one of the most prominent examples of free and open source software....
.