The History of Statistics IG brings together individuals and groups with an active interest in the history of statistics, to share research and resources.
Oct 6 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
In the fall of 1935 fisheries biologist Hugo Buchanan-Wollaston issued a challenge in Nature to “statisticians of international repute", criticizing the logic of statistical tests. Ronald Fisher & Karl Pearson rushed into battle. 1/82/ B-W argued for nonstatistical justification of the null hypothesis, complaining hypothesis tests were “useless” for scientific application. [He had worked with Fisher & greatly admired him, wanting to extend Fisher's methods to fisheries science]
Aug 20 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
#OTD1710 Thomas Simpson b (d 14 May 1761) 🏴His 1755 paper “On the Advantage of taking the Mean of a Number of Obfervations in Practical Aftronomy” is a milestone in statistical inference. It focused on observation error distributions rather than the observations themselves /6🧵
2/‘Simpsons Rule’ 1743 for estimating definite integrals was actually developed 100 years earlier by Johannes Kepler (Keplersche Fassregel), with versions by Bonaventura Cavalieri (a student of Galileo) in 1639, & James Gregory 1668
Jul 26 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
#OTD 1945 William Carter Jenkins b (d 17 Feb 2019) 🇺🇸“Tuskegee whistle-blower” epidemiologist. One of the first POC recruited to the US Public Health Service, he became a social justice activist exposing & correcting systemic racism in US health care & research /7
2/First to publicize the Tuskegee Syphilis Study (“the most unethical study in US history”) in the Drum (an anti-discrimination newsletter) but was ignored. In 1972, Peter Buxtun of PHS leaked the story to the Associated Press where it made front page news
Jul 12 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Your yearly reminder that “We need less research, better research, and research done for the right reasons” #OTD 1948 Douglas Altman b (d 3 June 2018)🇬🇧 A brilliant statistics educator & “one of the most influential medical statisticians of the past 50 years” /5 2/ Spearheaded reforms in medical research reliability & reporting [see .] With Martin Bland he published numerous highly cited papers on statistical methodology targeted primarily to non-statistician end users.equator-network.org
Jun 11 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
#OTD 1881 Hilda Hudson b (d 26 Nov 1965)🇬🇧OBE. Best known to statisticians for applying statistics & probability to develop the classic SIR model of epidemic infectious disease with Ronald Ross 1916-17. 1/7
2/Called “a distinguished mathematician of great erudition and integrity” her contributions were in both pure & applied maths. She was the first female invited speaker at International Congress of Mathematicians 1912.
Apr 19 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
#OTD 1922 RA Fisher publishes "On the Mathematical Foundations of Theoretical Statistics". He first read it to RSS @RoyalStatSoc on 17 Nov 1921. It ushered in modern mathematical statistics & marked a seismic shift in statistics which until then lacked a unifying structure. 1/6 2/ He proposed a unifying theory of statistics, with the focus on problems of estimation & distribution. However Fisher being Fisher, he begins with a jab at Karl Pearson.
Apr 7 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
#OTD 1761 Thomas Bayes d (b c.1701)🏴FRS Best known for his theorem, he in fact never published it; his notes were edited posthumously by his friend Richard Price. Much of his early work was related to infinite series & numerical analysis; he never published those either. 1/5 2/ He probably studied mathematics with James Gregory 1720-1 & became introduced to probability either directly from de Moivre (who hung out in London coffeeshops discussing probability) or after reading Simpson 1755.
Dec 2, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
#OTD 1921 Otis Dudley Duncan b (d 16 Nov 2004) 🇺🇸@AmStatNews Fellow 1961. "The most influential sociologist of the 20th century.” He made sociology quantitative & rigorous by introducing advanced statistical tools (path analysis, log-linear & Rasch models, spatial analysis) 1/4 2/ He broke with tradition by using statistical methods to summarize empirical patterns of between-group differences, rather than try to find universal laws of society that would mimic those of physical science.
Nov 17, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Today is the 102nd Birthday 🎂of The One Ring to Rule Them All. #OTD 1921 RA Fisher ushered in modern mathematical statistics with a paper read to the Royal Society of London "On the mathematical foundations of theoretical statistics". [It was published in 1922]. 1/4 2/ Fisher being Fisher he begins with a jab at Karl Pearson. He then proposes a unifying theory of statistics, with the focus on problems of estimation & distribution.
Nov 8, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
#OTD 1914 George B Dantzig b (d 13 May 2005) 🇺🇸National Medal of Science 1975. “Father of linear programming”, mathematical optimization, simplex algorithm. Professor of Operations Research & Computer Science at Stanford University 1/6 2/ He preferred statistics to abstract mathematics which he disliked, so he left graduate school in Michigan for UC Berkeley to work with Jerzy Neyman. The most famous story about him is the basis for the story line of the movie “Good Will Hunting”
Oct 28, 2023 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
#OTD 1912 Sir Richard Doll b (d 24 Jul 2005) 🇬🇧OBE, FRS, KB 1971 CH. Called the “greatest cancer #epidemiologist of all time” he is best known for his work w Bradford Hill at the MRC Statistical Research Unit investigating the relationship of smoking & lung cancer. 1/5 2/ Back when smoking seemed to be a "normal & harmless habit" they began a prospective study of British doctors & their smoking habits that lasted 50 years (Doll himself quit smoking during this study)
Jul 24, 2023 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
#OTD 1924 Paul Meier b (d 7 Aug 2011) USA. @AmStatNews Fellow 1959, Wilks Award 2004, Hon Fellow @InstMathStat & @RoyalStatSoc. President 1986 Society for Clinical Trials. Best known for the 1958 Kaplan-Meier estimator (per WaPo “co-inventor of a famous graph”!). 1/5
2/However his major contributions were to clinical trial design (esp randomisation), safety data review & trial ethics. At a time when randomisation was regarded w suspicion he was a tireless promoter of the central importance of what Peto calls ‘randomised evidence”
Jun 15, 2023 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
WS Gosset was interested in the practical application of statistics when the “problem is to get results as quickly and as cheaply as possible”. In his famous 1908 paper he proposed a criterion for the practical significance of a result 1/ 2/ He proposed 3x the probable error of the normal curve. This would be roughly a one-sided p-value of 0.02 (1 in 50 odds), because probable error is ~0.67456 of a standard deviation.
Jun 14, 2023 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
"Student" Part 2: The paper now described as “path-breaking” received little if any notice at first. Gosset was a chemist, not a mathematician, so he struggled with proofs. He “guessed” (his words) the correct form of the distribution he called z based on the 1/9 🧵
2/“properties of correlation coefficient & Professor Pearson's types of frequency curves".
Still a student at Cambridge, RA Fisher was the first to recognise the importance of Gosset’s 1908 paper, not just for its practical importance but b/c it was central
Jun 13, 2023 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
#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
Jun 12, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
The first population #census in North America was performed in 1665-6 by Jean Talon (“Canada’s first official statistician”) 🇫🇷. He was appointed by Louis XIV of France to improve the management of French colonies in what is now 🇨🇦. 1/ 2/ He needed to measure the population to “gauge the progress of European colonization” & implement policies to diversify the economy & strengthen governance.
Jun 11, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
#OTD 1881 Hilda Hudson b (d 26 Nov 1965)🇬🇧 OBE. Best known to statisticians for developing the classic SIR model of epidemic infectious disease with Ronald Ross 1916-17 she also pioneered application of sophisticated mathematics to aeronautical engineering. 1/5 2/ She was the first ever female invited speaker at International Congress of Mathematicians 1912 where she read a paper on curved surfaces. Semple called her “a distinguished mathematician of great erudition and integrity”.
Jun 4, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
In June 1905 Karl Pearson introduced the terms ‘kurtosis’, ‘leptokurtic’, ‘platykurtic’ & ‘mesokurtic’ to describe shapes of skewed frequency distributions. The paper was otherwise a huffy (& lengthy) rejoinder to some German critics of his 1899 paper on skew variation 1/4 2/ As well as highly entertaining criticisms of his foes, the paper also presents derivations & distribution data for a variety of biological data, including human skulls, crab ‘foreheads’, shell lengths, & organ weights.
Jun 2, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
#OTD 2012 Genuchi Taguchi d (b 1 Jan 1924) 🇯🇵 founder of the Taguchi method for quality product improvement - reduction of process variation through robust design of experiments. His methods revolutionized manufacturing quality control practices & mindsets. 1/4 2/ He collaborated throughout the 1950s with other notable statisticians such as CR Rao Fisher Shewart & was sponsored by Tukey at Princeton
Jun 1, 2023 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
#OTD 1866 Charles Davenport b (d 18 Feb 1944)🇺🇸@amstat Fellow 1921. Director Cold Spring Harbor Labs. His 1899 text ‘Statistical Methods with Special Reference to Biological Variation’ actively promoted statistical methods pioneered by Galton & Pearson for biological research 1/7 2/ Reviews were cool (which incensed him): there were a lot of mistakes in the first edition, the amount of hand calculation was formidable, & he seemed to underestimate the difficulties for most researchers in their application.
Mar 15, 2023 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Louis-Dominique-Jules Gavarret (28 Jan 1809-30 Aug 1890) 🇫🇷was the first (1840) to apply a forerunner of confidence intervals to clinical data, & described 5 principles for rigorous clinical trial conduct. Unfortunately his book 'Principes de Statistique Médicale' 1/7 🧵
was almost forgotten by the end of the 19th c. He learned how ‘le calcul des probabilités’ could be applied during a debate in 1835 at the Académie des Sciences, where Navier (of Navier-Stokes equation fame) described how it could be applied to therapeutic research 2/7