Conceptual Anomalies in Economics and Statistics synthesizes close to thirty years of study, research, and teaching in a variety of academic areas. Teachers, students, family members, an editor, schools, and funding institutions contributed indirectly to the writing of this book and deserve recognition.

Though I didn't realize it then, I started preparing to write this book at Chicago's Hyde Park High School during 1956–60, where Mrs. Eva Shull sparked the interest in mathematics evident in nearly every chapter.

During 1960–5, I studied humanities and science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.), concentrating in literature (with some philosophy) and mathematics (with some physics). Literature courses with Benjamin DeMott, Norman Holland, Louis Kampf, and William Harvey Youngren helped me develop the textual analytic writing style that permeates this book. A philosophy course with John Rawls introduced me to the work of David Hume, a discussion of which opens Chapter 4, and inspired me to study Mill and the modern philosophers on whose writings the book draws. Gian Carlo Rota's course in combinatorial analysis underpins Chapter 2. Courses in elementary classical, advanced classical, and quantum mechanics from Alan Lazarus, R. H. Lemmer, and Irwin Pless, respectively, suggested some of my examples in Chapter 5.

During 1965–7, I was a graduate student in mathematics at Northwestern University, and during 1967–8, I taught mathematics at Chicago City College, Southeast Branch.