History of Statistics

Statistics is said to have developed from Govt records. All cultures with a recorded history is
also have recorded statistics done mostly by agents of the Govt for Governmental Purposes.
In ancient Egypt, the Govt prepared registration list of all the heads of the families. In ancient
Judea, a census of the population was taken on several occasions, such as 2030 B.C. when the
populations were est. 3.8 Million. In 435 B.C., the 1
st
Roman census was taken in the presence of the
censors. Such a census was repeated 69 times in the following 470 years of Roman History. The most
famous Roman census was recorded in the Bible. This happened during the time of Joseph and Mary,
the parents of Jesus Christ. On Luke 2:1-4, we can read:
Now in those days a decree went forth from Caesar Augustus for all the inhabited earth to be
registered. This registration took place when Quirinius was Governor of Syria and all people went
travelling to be registered, each one to his own city. Of course, Joseph also went up from Galilee out of
the city of Nazareth into Judea to Davids city, which is called Bethlehem, because of hi a member of the
house and the family of David.
In the middle Ages, taxes, military service, and custom duties were also recorded. When William
the Conqueror took possession of England, he ordered that a survey be made of the lands of England for
purposes of taxation and military service.
In the beginning of the 16
th
century, a large number of statistical handbooks were published.
This type of descriptive statistics was referred to as Die Tabellen Statistik, The 1
st
scientific analysis of
publicly recorded data may be ascribed to Capt. John Graunt (1620 1647). The registration of deaths
was started by Henry VIII in 1532, and weekly bills of mortality were instituted during the period of the
plague.
The study of statistics in the modern times in particularly concerned with drawing interferences
about the properties of a large collection of persons, objects or things by studying its representative or
small sample. The theory of mathematical probability plays an important role in statistics. In fact,
statistical theories are based on probability theory. The theory of Probability emerged during the 17
th

century when it was used in gambling and other games of chance.
Several people who were involved in the development of modern statistics are Abraham De
Moivre (1667 1754), who discovered the equation of the normal curve, Karl Pearson, Maguis de
Laplace, and Carl Friedrich Gauss who independently worked on the methods of finding the correlation
among several variables.
In the 20
th
, sir Ronald Fisher made significant contributions to the science of statistics. He
discovered a unified theory for drawing rigorous conclusions from statistical data. He also contributed to
the theory of design of experiments, which provided a technique for collecting primary data in such a
way the valid inferences might be drawn from them.