Glenn Shafer writes on the philosophy and history of probability and statistics. He retired from teaching in 2025 and is now University Professor Emeritus at Rutgers University.

Glenn is currently completing a book entitled An Introduction to Game-Theoretic Statistics, which explains how statistical testing and statistical inference can be understood in terms of a game between a forecaster and an opponent who bets against the forecasts. Statistical inference requires forecasters that are trusted because they have been tested in this way. This way of viewing statistical inference allows us to appreciate both its power and its limitations.

In earlier books Glenn and co-author Vladimir Vovk showed that the game between a forecaster and a betting opponent can be used as a framework for the mathematical theory of probability. Information on these books and many related papers are at www.probabilityandfinance.com.

While Glenn believes that imagined betting is fundamental to probability theory and its use in statistics, he also believes that mathematicians and statisticians should do more to warn people about the dangers of real betting. A recent article with Valentin Dimitrov illustrates how this can be done.

Glenn’s contributions to the history of probability and statistics include more than twenty papers and several translations from French. His most recent contribution in this area is the book The Splendors and Miseries of Martingales: Their History from the Casino to Mathematics, co-edited with Laurent Mazliak and published by Birkhäuser in 2022.

Glenn is also well known for his work in the 1970s and 1980s on the Dempster-Shafer theory, an alternative theory of probability that has been applied widely in engineering and artificial intelligence. The Belief Functions and Applications Society, which is devoted to the advancement of Dempster-Shafer theory, has been holding international conferences since 2010.

For more information on Glenn’s research career, see Barbara Osmani’s 2016 interview of Glenn, his 2016 intellectual autobiography, and the biography in honor of his 75th birthday.

During his teaching career, Glenn was active in university governance. In 2004, he received Rutgers University’s most prestigious faculty award, the Gorenstein Award for Research and Service. He served as director of his school’s doctoral program for ten years and as dean of his school for four years. In 2010, Glenn explained his philosophy of education in a commencement address entitled “You are the face and future of opportunity.”

Glenn spent his childhood on a farm near Caney, Kansas, earned an undergraduate degree in mathematics at Princeton, and served in the Peace Corps in Afghanistan before launching his academic career. He completed a doctorate in mathematical statistics at Princeton in 1973. Before joining the Rutgers Business School in 1992, he taught at Princeton and the University of Kansas.

Glenn and his wife Nell Painter, artist and distinguished professor emerita of history at Princeton University, live in East Orange, New Jersey. Nell’s most recent books are The History of White People, Old in Art School, and I Just Keep Talking.

This page last revised July 4, 2025