John Haigh 1941–2021

Abstract

John Haigh, who died on 9 March 2021 aged 79, was the pre-eminent populariser of probability for his time. Through many publications and media appearances, he perfected the rare art of explaining subtle concepts and calculations to those who would claim no mathematical knowledge. Though his audiences may not have realised it, his standards were high; he never shielded them from a calculation they could do or a concept they could master. He recounted with delight how a colleague had reported her stockbroker husband saying to her at midnight ‘I can’t come to bed just yet dear: I have to finish one of the calculations in Dr Haigh’s book’. John was born on 31 December 1941 and grew up as an only child in Skelmanthorpe, a village near Huddersfield in Yorkshire, where his father worked in the woollen mill and his mother in the canteen. His Methodist upbringing gave John a valuable objectivity in later life as an expert on gambling: gambling was frowned upon, but winning through gambling was especially deprecated. From grammar school (‘three hours homework every night’), he won a State Scholarship to read mathematics at Brasenose College Oxford, gaining first-class honours and a University Prize in 1963. Soccer provided a social as well as sporting escape from the general rugby-playing ex-public-school milieu, and John rose to win a Blue, playing for his university against Cambridge at Wembley (where Oxford lost 5–2). Students then were not supposed to gain both a Blue and a First, as the sporty and scholarly subpopulations of undergraduates were largely distinct. D. G. Kendall left Oxford during John’s undergraduate years to be the first holder of the Chair of Mathematical Statistics at Cambridge, and his reputation was such that it was no surprise for bright students to follow him to the other place and join the re-invigorated Statistical Laboratory. With a government grant, John started as one of DGK’s research students in 1963, enrolling at Gonville and Caius College. He was unlucky in the existence of a link between Caius and his Oxford College, as without that he would have joined Kendall’s college, the recently founded Churchill, which looked after its many graduate students, whereas the old colleges neglected them. The young Mr Kingman, as Sir John Kingman then was, took over some of Kendall’s research students in 1964. John Haigh was among them, and when Kingman left for the University of Sussex, it was natural for him to follow, though remaining registered for a Cambridge PhD. From his research studentship, John progressed to a lectureship at Sussex, where he stayed for the rest of his career, though spending summers in the 1970s at Melbourne and Stanford, and the year 1983–1984 at the University of Guelph in Canada. At Sussex, he was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 1989 and to Reader in 1993. Retirement was a progress through many stages, and John was still giving a lecture course to first-year undergraduates in his 70s. John’s thesis was on random equivalence relations, a combinatorial topic but with a biological motivation; early papers were thus on applications of probability to questions in biology and genetics. Collaboration with the biologist John Maynard Smith led to five important joint papers, laying down the mathematical theory of concepts such as evolutionarily stable strategy, which underpin much of later thinking about evolution. Subsequent work, mostly single-authored but interspersed with joint papers with various co-authors, established John as an expert on combinatorial applied probability, especially with reference to evolution, game theory and games of chance. There was even a foray into operational research, with three papers on manpower planning. The UK National Lottery began in 1994 and gained John’s immediate interest: his first paper on it was published less than a year later. He went on to become the academic expert on the game, contributing a read paper to the Society, ‘The statistics of the National Lottery’, in 1997. Work on this and other gambles led to John’s highly successful popular book Taking Chances: Winning with Probability (OUP), one of the Books of the Year in 1999 for the Independent newspaper. The second edition remains in print, and there are Spanish and Chinese translations. Other books followed: in 2002 an undergraduate text, Probability Models (Springer), and in 2005, with Rob Eastaway, How to Take a Penalty, another popular success, running to an updated edition as The Hidden Mathematics of Sport (Portico) in 2011, and with a new edition due in 2021. In 2012, John was a natural choice to contribute Probability: A Very Short Introduction to Oxford University Press’s successful series of such titles. Publicity around his first book led to many invitations to speak and write articles about ways in which ‘probability’ can impinge on everyday existence, and John became something of a media pundit, appearing in TV discussions with Carol Vorderman, Peter Snow and others on topics ranging from roulette to pyramid selling. With a natural authority of manner, and remaining obviously a Yorkshireman despite having moved south permanently at 18, John could be relied upon for a transparent exposure of any fraudulent arithmetical claim put out by a marketing department. He was profiled in the Independent on Sunday (1999) and the Guardian (2005). At the other end of the newspaper spectrum, his analysis of the likelihood of the team who score first winning a football match appeared in the Sun. Further media exposure came as part of ‘spreading the word’, to young people especially: John was the Schools Lecturer in 2005–2006 for the RSS, and in 2006 one of the two speakers for the London Mathematical Society’s Popular Lectures. Non-media exposure also increasingly came John’s way. He and the author of this obituary were supplied by the RSS as its team to report on ‘The randomness of the National Lottery’ to the regulator for the lottery’s first 3 years. Our reports, received in a manner that betrayed lack of comprehension, were shelved, but a number of years later one was leaked to the press, and still had enough interest to merit the main headline in the Observer one Sunday. Other consultancy work followed, such as for the Advertising Standards Authority, and was combined with appearances as expert witness on the topic of ‘randomness’ in criminal trials, including high-profile cases involving alleged fixing of horse races. Back at the University of Sussex, John developed a legendary reputation for being able to convince even the most recalcitrant non-mathematical student that statistics could and should be grappled with. He created the stochastic component of the course Forensic Science and the Legal Process, bravely taught to a mixed group of chemistry students and law students. Latterly, in semi-retirement, he invented and gave the course Mathematics in Everyday Life, well received as part of the core curriculum for first-year mathematics. That too gave rise to a textbook, with the same title, published by Springer in 2016 and now in a second edition. Service to his university and his discipline was a salient part of John’s career. Within Sussex University, he served 6 years as Chairman of Mathematics, through a fraught period of near-forced early retirements, major reorganisation and threat of closure—and, eventually, of renewal, in which he played a visionary role. John also organised Sussex’s initial registration under the Data Protection Act, chaired a succession of major committees, served on the Senate for almost 14 years and on the University Council for 9. External service began early, with work as an examiner for the pre-merger Institute of Statisticians, continuing with what eventually became the RSS Graduate Diploma all the way until examinations ceased in 2017. Also for the RSS, John was involved with all the journals: Assistant Editor of Series B, Joint Editor of Series D, Book Reviews Editor for the journals generally, and stints on the editorial boards of Series A and Significance. He chaired the Sussex Local Group, now alas no longer in existence. Similarly, for the Mathematical Association, he chaired the Sussex Branch and co-organised its Mathematics Masterclasses. He served for 20 years as University Assessor for appointments to the Statistician grade in the Civil Service, until outsourcing finally succeeded in making the job not worth the trouble. In his mid-70s, John developed a blood condition that left him increasingly tired in the intervals between successive transfusions. He was very open about his condition, reporting to friends in autumn 2020 that he was happy still to be around after being told in the spring to expect only a few months to live. He continued to be intellectually active, expressing delight that his 9-and-half-year-old grandchild was fascinated when he showed her ‘properties of the Möbius Strip and, on the laptop, some of Escher’s Impossible Figures’. John was still corresponding in his last few days with Rob Eastaway about probability problems in sport. Never given to display, John was well suited to marriage but took some years to achieve that state. He and Kay had two sons, Adam and Daniel, but Daniel died of colon cancer in 2007, aged 27. John is survived by Kay, Adam and Izzy (Isabella), daughter of Adam and his wife Kelly.