Suppes was born on March 17, 1922, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He grew up as an only child, later with a half-brother George nearly 20 years his junior who was born in 1943 after Patrick had entered the army. His grandfather, C. E. Suppes, had moved to Oklahoma from Ohio. Suppes' father and grandfather were independent oil men. His mother died when he was a young boy. He was raised by his stepmother, who married his father when he was almost six years old. His parents did not have much formal education.[2]
Suppes began college at the University of Oklahoma in 1939, but transferred to the University of Chicago in his second year, citing boredom with intellectual life in Oklahoma as his primary motivation. In his third year, at the insistence of his family, Suppes attended the University of Tulsa, majoring in physics, before entering the Army Reserves in 1942. In 1943 he returned to the University of Chicago and graduated with a B.S. in meteorology, and was stationed shortly thereafter at the Solomon Islands to serve during World War II.[2]
In the 1960s Suppes and Richard C. Atkinson (the future president of the University of California) conducted experiments in using computers to teach math and reading to school children in the Palo Alto area.[3] Stanford's Education Program for Gifted Youth and Computer Curriculum Corporation (CCC, now named Pearson Education Technologies) are indirect descendants of those early experiments.[4] At Stanford, Suppes was instrumental in encouraging the development of high-technology companies that were springing up in the field of educational software up into the 1990s, (such as Bien Logic).
One computer used in Suppes and Atkinson's Computer-assisted Instruction (CAI) experiments was the specialized IBM 1500 Instructional System. Seeded by a research grant in 1964 from the U.S. Department of Education to the Institute for Mathematical Studies in the Social Sciences at Stanford University, the IBM 1500 CAI system was initially prototyped at the Brentwood Elementary School (Ravenswood City School District) in East Palo Alto, California by Suppes. The students first used the system in 1966.[5][6]
Suppes' Dial-a-Drill program was a touchtone phone interface for CAI. Ten schools around Manhattan were involved in the program which delivered three lessons per week by telephone.[7] Dial-a-Drill adjusted the routine for students who answered two questions incorrectly.[8] The system went online in March 1969. Touchtone telephones were installed in the homes of children participating in the program. Field workers educated parents on the benefits of the program and collected feedback.[9]
Suppes, Patrick; Arrow, Kenneth J.; Karlin, Samuel (1960). Mathematical models in the social sciences, 1959: Proceedings of the first Stanford symposium. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. ISBN978-0-8047-0021-4.
Including: Suppes, Patrick (1960), Stimulus-sampling theory for a continuum of response, pp. 348–363.
Suppes, Patrick (1972 [1960]). Axiomatic Set Theory. Dover. Spanish translation by H. A. Castillo, Teoria Axiomatica de Conjuntos.
Vol. 2: Philosophy of Physics, Theory Structure and Measurement, and Action Theory.
Suppes, Patrick (1999) (1957). Introduction to Logic. Dover. Spanish translation by G. A. Carrasco, Introduccion a la logica simbolica. Chinese translation by Fu-Tseng Liu.
Suppes, Patrick (2002). Representation and Invariance of Scientific Structures. CSLI (distributed by the University of Chicago Press).
Suppes, Patrick; Hill, Shirley (2002) (1964). A First Course in Mathematical Logic. Dover. Spanish translation.
Suppes, Patrick; Luce, R. Duncan; Krantz, David; Tversky, Amos (2007) (1972). Foundations of Measurement, Vols. 1–3. Dover.
^"Learning by phone". New York Amsterdam News. March 8, 1969. p. 9.
^Umans, S (1970). The management of education: A systematic design for educational revolution. Garden City, N.Y: Doubleday.
^Beech, R. P; McClelland, S. D; Horowitz, G. R; Forlano, G (1970). Final Report: An Evaluation of the Dial-A-Drill Program. New York University: Center for Field Research and School.
^Kirk Ludwig (ed.). "Donald Davidson"(PDF). Catdir.loc.gov. Retrieved October 27, 2021.
^"Patrick Suppes". American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Retrieved April 14, 2022.
^National Medal of Science page (Archived March 11, 2007, at the Wayback Machine) Citation: "For his broad efforts to deepen the theoretical and empirical understanding of four major areas: the measurement of subjective probability and utility in uncertain situations; the development and testing of general learning theory; the semantics and syntax of natural language; and the use of interactive computer programs for instruction."
Suppes on Computer Chronicles TV program. "Computer Chronicles: Computers In Education (1984): An early look at how computers are being used in formal education. Guests include Professor Patrick Suppes of Stanford University and Glenn Kleiman, author of 'Brave New Schools'. Includes demonstrations of the LOGO and BASIC languages. Guest host is Herb Lechner of SRI International."
