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#OTD 1876 William Sealy Gosset b (d 16 Oct 1937) 🇬🇧Best known for Student's t-statistic & distribution, developed 1908 while working for Guinness Brewery. He is probably the first modern industrial statistician. 1/ 
2/ Guinness had almost doubled beer production between 1887 & 1914 so consistent quality was a concern. The problem was determining how representative a small sample might be of the whole batch. Gosset was assigned to the problem because he had taken maths at Oxford
3/ so was “less scared of this kind of problem than the other brewers”. Fisher greatly admired Gosset, calling him “one of the most original minds in contemporary science”.
4/ Fun fact: Gosset published under the pseudonym “Student”. Guinness employees were not allowed to publish under their own names. One story has it C.D. LaTouche, the managing director of Guinness gave him the choice of “A Student” or “A Pupil’.
5/ Ziliak suggests it originated from his 1906–1907 notebook which had "The Student's Science Notebook" on the cover. The notebook contained data on counting yeast cells with a haemacytometer
Ref Student 1908 The probable error of a mean Biometrika 4:1-24
Ziliak ST 2008. The great skew: R A Fisher and the copyright history of ‘Student’s’ t. faculty.roosevelt.edu/Ziliak
Ziliak ST 2008. The great skew: R A Fisher and the copyright history of ‘Student’s’ t. faculty.roosevelt.edu/Ziliak
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