You've heard of Markov chains. But who was Markov?

Markov was an atheist. In 1912 he protested Leo Tolstoy's excommunication from the Russian Orthodox Church by requesting his own excommunication. The Church complied with his request. [Wikipedia.](<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrey_Markov" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrey_Markov</a>)

I always assumed a Markov chain was some kind of Siberian drinking game. Hence the interest in the running the chain to its stationary distribution.

Being a true Markov, his history is irrelevant!

the reason why not many people know who Markov is is that sometimes he is hidden. And a hidden markov can be quite elusive.

&#62; A “Monopoly” board has 40 possible “states”<p>Ah, just like chess has 64 possible states. Except that chess has on the order 10^47 states.

Russia used Julian calendar up to 1918. If that was a date marked in the original calendar, it wasn't 100 years ago "this week".

Slightly off-topic, but Brian Hayes (mentioned several times in the article) has a very good blog here: <a href="http://bit-player.org/" rel="nofollow">http://bit-player.org/</a>

Even today wikipedia mentions nothing of interdependence on probability...