STATISTICIANS THROUGH HISTORY Jacques Bernoulli (1654-1705) wrote The Art of Conjecture in which he argued that because probabilities

could be calculated for ratios of chance events, such as the fall of sets of dice, or turn of a card, it can also be proved that the greater the number of experiments, (of rolls of the dice, or turns of the card), the more closely the estimated ratios would come to the true ratio of their probabilities. This was the first statement of what we call the 'central limit theorem'. Gerolamo Cardana (1501-1576) Wrote the first book on probability, 'Liber de Ludo Aleae' (The Book on Games of Chance) in which he concluded that each face of a die has an equal chance of being thrown, 'if the die is honest'. This statement is of vital importance to the theory of probability. Rene Descartes (1596-1650) Believed that the universe had a mathematical structure. Reasoned that if this was true, then the structure of the universe can be understood by the study of mathematics. It followed to Descartes that if he could rule out any doubt from anything he asserted in his own mind, then that thing must be true. Out of this rationale came his most famous assertion: 'cogito ergo sum' / 'I think, therefore I am'. In mathematics Descartes is seen as the creator of the algebra of geometry. Ronald Fisher (1890-1962) In 1922 he gave a new definition of statistics. Its purpose was the reduction of data and he identified three fundamental problems. These are firstly, specification of the kind of population that the data came from, secondly estimation and, thirdly, distribution. The contributions Fisher made included the development of methods suitable for small samples, like those of Gosset, the discovery of the precise distributions of many sample statistics and the invention of analysis of variance. He introduced the term maximum likelihood and studied hypothesis testing. Fisher is considered one of the founders of modern statistics because of his many important contributions. Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) Italian mathematician and philosopher, famous for his work on gravity and the use of the telescope. Made a number of astronomical discoveries and was a proponent of the argument, originally voiced by Copernicus, that all the planets of the solar system move around the sun. Galileo also wrote on probability in games of chance. Francis Galton (1822-1911) An explorer and anthropologist, Francis Galton is known for his pioneering studies of human intelligence. He devoted the latter part of his life to eugenics, i.e. improving the physical and mental makeup of the human species by selected parenthood. Galton, the cousin of Charles Darwin, was convinced that ability in various fields was due almost entirely to hereditary factors. He opposed those who claimed that intelligence or character were determined by environmental factors. He inquired into racial differences, something almost unacceptable today, and was one of the first to employ questionnaire and survey methods, which he used to investigate mental imagery in different groups of people. Unhappily, for his reputation today, his work led him to advocate breeding restrictions. William Gosset (1876-1937) Gosset worked initially as a chemist in the Guinness brewery in Dublin in 1899 and did important work on statistics. He invented the t-test to handle small samples for quality control in brewing. He wrote under the name "Student". Check your statistics or quantitative methods textbook and you'll probably find his 'Student's t-table' within the appendices. John Graunt (1620-1674) Can be regarded as the author of the first book on statistics, 'Natural and Political Observations Upon the Bills of Mortality' in 1662. The Bills of Mortality mentioned in the title refer to the collections of mortality figures in London. London had suffered from plague outbreaks at intervals and the King wanted to use an early-warning system of the threat of fresh outbreaks. Weekly records were kept of mortality and the causes of death in the capital. On the basis of these Bills, Graunt made an estimate of the population of London. This is thought of as the first example of the interpretation of passive data and the beginnings of what is now called 'statistics'. Most importantly, Graunt checked his calculations of total population by going to the evidence. He took three parishes as representative samples. This again, was a revolutionary step. John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) Put forward the process of reasoning where the scientist puts forward an hypothesis about a relationship, then subjects the conclusions that are deduced from that hypothesis to the test of experience. In his view if conclusions are found to accord with experience, an hypothesis is verified. Modern views have put this verification slighlty differently: if the hypothesis is not contradicted, it remains a conjectured explanation of a relationship; if the hypothesis is contradicted, in even a single instance, it is rejected. Mill can also be regarded as one of the first to start to look for a system of thought that would provide acceptable levels of confidence short of certainty. Abraham de Moivre (1667-1754) French mathematician who worked in London and was a friend of Isaac Newton. De Moivre was the first to state the properties of the normal curve. We can state the exact proportion of a population that will lie between any two values of items in a population, because of de Moivre's work. He also studied mortality statistics and the foundation of the theory of annuities. Despite de Moivre's scientific prowess, his main income was by tutoring mathematics and he died in poverty. He is famed for predicting the day of his own death. He found that he was sleeping 15 minutes longer each night and calculated by arithmetic progression that he would die on the day that he slept for 24 hours. He was right. Moses (dates unknown) The fourth book of Moses, Numbers, describes a census taken of the people of Israel. All males of age 20 and upwards were counted and Moses found a total of 603 550 'adult' males. Not really a statistician by strict definition, as there has to be an interpretation of the data for a statistical operation to have happened. Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) Used the power of statistics to support her campaign for reform of the hospital system. Barracks and hospital hygiene standards were her chief concerns, but her efforts exposed the shortcomings of the statistics collected by the authorities. The inconsistencies, inaccuracies and generally the unreliability of these statistics drove her to recommend a standard system of classification and nomenclature for hospitals. Karl Pearson (1857-1936) applied statistics to biological problems of heredity and evolution. From 1893 to 1912 he wrote 18 papers entitled Mathematical Contribution to the Theory of Evolution which contain his most valuable work. These papers contain contributions to regression analysis and the correlation coefficient. Pearson coined the term 'standard deviation' in 1893. Pearson had a long dispute with Fisher. Pearson used large samples which he measured and from which he tried to deduce correlations. Fisher, on the other hand, followed Gosset in trying to use small samples and, rather than deduce correlations, to find causes. The dispute was bad enough to have Fisher turn down the post of Chief Statistician at the Galton Laboratory in 1919 since it would have meant working under Pearson. William Petty (1623-1687) Friend of John Graunt, proposed the setting-up of a central statistical office for the English crown, and made estimates of the sum of England's wealth. In working to produce what we call today a national income analysis, he made the revolutionary step

of assuming that national income was the same as total national consumption. Made estimations of loss to the national economy resulting from plague death. Suggested that modest expenditure by the state to prevent deaths from plague would produce substantial economic benefits. William Playfair (1759-1823) Maverick Scot who introduced into statistics the line graph, bar chart and pie chart. Lived for some time in revolutionary France, before falling out with the revolutionaries. A prolific author he also fell out with the Edinburgh establishment after publishing negative remarks about Adam Smith. Adolphe Quetelet (1796-1874) Belgian mathematician who when studying the distribution of people's characteristics observed and studied the properties of the normal distribution curve - one of the central concepts in statistics. Quetelet divided the different heights of people he studied along an horizontal axis, and noted the total numbers of people of specific heights in columns parallel to the vertical axis. He saw that the highest columns in his diagrams were clustered together around a mid-point. The height of the columns fell away symmetrically on either side of the highest column until, at the extreme values of the range, the columns were very small. He used these observations to suggest that the chances of big deviations in any characteristic were limited. Crucially, too, he saw that the distribution of a characteristic in a population follows the shape of a bell when put into a diagram. The properties of the bell-shaped distribution are Quetelet's greatest contribution to modern statistics. Sir John Sinclair (1754-1835) Much debate centred on the origin of the modern use of the term 'statistics'. There are early examples of the term being used by German political scientists, (Hermann Conring, a professor, lectured on the political constitutions of states around 1660), but for them, statistics meant studying about states. The first example of the use of the term as we understand it today, is acknowledged to be by a Scot, Sinclair, who took the name 'statistics' from the Germans and applied it to his study of numerical data about Scotland: Statistical Account of Scotland (1791 - 99). There is more detail available on the work of Sinclair and the two follow-up Statistical Accounts of Scotland. John Snow (1813-58) London doctor whose specialism was obstetric anesthesia, (his patients included Queen Victoria), was also an expert in epidemiology and had a fascination with the spread of cholera. In a severe cholera outbreak in London in 1854, he analysed the geography of water supply and mortality patterns in Soho. He found that a very high proportion of cholera cases occurred in houses supplied by one water company, with nearly 500 cases within a few blocks of a single water pump alone on Broad Street. Snow found a sewer pipe within a few feet of the well that fed the pump. He reasoned that the pipe was contaminating the well and the pump water. The epidemic had started in August 1854 and the pump handle was removed on Sept 8, but people argue over whether this actually stopped the epidemic, which had already begun to lessen. The temporary removal of the pump handle has since been hailed as one of the first public-health interventions of the modern era. The chart that Snow used to depict the cholera outbreak is included below as an early example of effective depiction of data. Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher, FRS (17 February 1890 - 29 July 1962) was an English statistician, evolutionary biologist, and geneticist. Richard Dawkins described him as "The greatest of Darwin's successors", and the historian of statistics Anders Hald said "Fisher was a genius who almost single-handedly created the foundations for modern statistical science".His contributions to experimental design, analysis of variance, and likelihood based methods have led some to call him "The Father of Statistics". Karl Pearson (March 27, 1857 - April 27, 1936) was a major contributor to the early development of statistics, and founder of the world's first university statistics department at University College London in 1911. He was also an ardent and controversial proponent of eugenics. His most famous contribution is the Pearson's chi-square test. Gertrude Mary Cox (January 13, 1900 - 1978) was an influential American statistician and founder of the department of Experimental Statistics at North Carolina State University. She was later appointed director of both the Institute of Statistics of the Consolidated University of North Carolina and the Statistics Research Division of North Carolina State University. Her most important and influential research dealt with experimental design; she wrote an important book on the subject with W. G. Cochran. In 1949 Cox became the first female elected into the International Statistical Institute and in 1956 she was president of the American Statistical Association. John Wilder Tukey (June 16, 1915 - July 26, 2000) was a professor of Statistics at Princeton University. A mathematician by training, his statistical interests were many and varied. He contributed significantly to what is today known as the jackknife procedure. He introduced the box plot in his 1977 book, Exploratory Data Analysis.He also contributed to statistical practice and articulated the important distinction between exploratory data analysis and confirmatory data analysis, believing that much statistical methodology placed too great an emphasis on the latter. Student (William Sealy Gosset) William Sealy Gosset (June 13, 1876 - October 16, 1937) was a chemist and statistician, better known by his pen name Student. He worked in a beer brewery and his testing of very small patches led him to discover certain small-sample distributions.This led to the development of Student's t-Test. His communications with Fisher on the subject are legendary. George Edward Pelham Box, born on October 18, 1919, was a pioneer in the areas of quality control, time series analysis, and design of experiments. Still on the engineering faculty of University of Wisconsin, he is well-known for the quote all models are wrong, but some are useful. His books Statistics for Experimenters and Time Series Analysis: Forecasting and Control are classic texts. Sir David R. Cox, born in 1924, is a British statistician who has made pioneering and important contributions to numerous areas of statistics and applied probability. Perhaps the best known of his many developments is the proportional hazards model, which is widely used in the analysis of survival data. He is now an Honorary Fellow of Nuffield College and a member of the Department of Statistics at the University of Oxford. Jerome H. Friedman is one of the world's leading researchers in statistical data mining. He has been a Professor of Statistics at Stanford University for nearly 20 years and has published on a wide range of data mining topics including nearest neighbor classification, logistic regression, and high-dimensional data analysis, and machine learning. Professor Bradley Efron is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, president of the American Statistical Association, recipient of the MacArthur Prize, and winner of the Wilks Medal of the American Statistical Association. Professor Efron is renowned internationally for his pioneering work in computationally intensive statistical methods, particularly the bootstrap method and the biased coin design. He is still a very active researcher, having worked more recently in statistical genetics.

Florence Nightingale David (1909 1993), a great statistician and a fighter for increasing womens roles in the sciences, began her career as a research assistant in Karl Pearsons laboratory. During World War II, she became an experimental officer and senior statistician for the Research and Experiments Department, and was scientific advisor on mines for the military. David felt that the war gave women more opportunities and that conditions for them are now better because of it. After serving as a lecturer and professor at University College for many years, in 1970 she was offered the chair of statistics at the University of California at Riverside. Dorian Shainin (1914-2001) was one of the earliest pioneers for Weibull analysis and engineering statistics. He inspired the author to do a doctorate in statistics (although Dorian thought it was a waste of time.). He led the team that created "Precontrol," a means of using statistics to actually control a process rather than just test the process to see if it is in statistical control of its own accord. His "Random Balance" preceded Taguchi and was equally controversial. His humor was endless. He claimed he drank carrot juice and vodka; "I can get just as high but I can see better." In his search for the "Red X," the root cause of mysterious problems, he created a very large number of statistical methods such as "Step-Stress," and some very clever investigative strategies. Dorian received every one of ASQs major awards and was made an honorary member by the Board of Directors. The consulting firm Dorian founded has continued as Shainin LLC. Dorians son, Peter Shainin, is the manager of the firm and provided this picture. E.J. Gumbel (1891-1966) spent much of his life studying the statistics of extreme values, (rare events). Born in Germany he resisted the secret rearmament of Germany after World War I and left. He did much of his research in the USA at NBS, now NIST. He and Waloddi Weibull did a sabbatical together at Columbia University and became good friends. Gumbel was fascinated by the fact that the Weibull distribution and Extreme Value Type III minimum are the same distribution. Extreme Value Type I is called the "Gumbel" distribution. It is employed for predicting maximum and minimum values, flood levels, wind gusts, the size of inclusions in metal. The Weibull and the Gumbel minimum are related like the normal and the log normal through a logarithmic transformation. One of his greatest contributions was to prove that if a part or component had multiple failure modes and our interest was in the first failure, Type III minimum, the Weibull, is the appropriate distribution. This idea is called the "weakest link in the chain" theory and is the reason that the Weibull is the worlds most popular distribution for life data analysis. William S Gosset (1876-1937) earned a degree in chemistry at Oxford, and joined the Guinness brewery firm in 1899. His work for Guinness led him investigate the statistical validity of results obtained from small samples (previous statistical theory had concentrated instead on large samples). His publications in Pearson's journal Biometrika were signed "Student," in deference to Guinness company policy forbidding publication by employees. His most important result was known as the "Student's t" test or distribution, published in 1908. His work founded the concept of quality control. He was the pioneer of small sample analysis inventing "Students t," C4, and the "F" test. The author considers him to be the greatest statistician that ever lived. He inspired both Karl Pearson and Ronald Fisher to develop small sample methods. Moreover among these three peers he was the nice friendly person, the other two being outspoken and arrogant. He was a communication link between these two arch enemies and further, befriended Egon Pearson, Karl Pearsons son, and Jerzy Neyman When Gosset died unexpectedly in 1937, among the group, his loss was felt most keenly by the Egon Pearson, who remarked perceptively: "I think that there are so very many things that we owe to 'Student' in the present statistical world. I would like to interest people in him, his practical mindedness and his simplicity of approach. It would be so easy for people to miss in the picture that large part he played simply by being in touch, by correspondence or personal meetings, with all the mathematical statisticians of his day." [From "Acquiring Statistics" by E Bruce Brooks] Egon devoted much of his later life to writing the book "Student" about Gosset and his relationship with Fisher and Karl Pearson. Gosset became world famous as a statistician but never gave up his pursuit of better beer. Another of his peers was Florence Nightingale David* who was also a statistician. She said of the group: "I saw the lot of them. Went fly fishing with Gosset. A nice man. Went to Fisher's seminars with Cochran and that gang. Endured K P. Spent three years with Neyman. Then I was on Egon Pearson's faculty for year." Ronald Fisher considered Gossett to be his best friend. Fisher wrote in Gossetts obituary: "Students work has shown that a better course is open to us than that of adopting even the best available estimate of the variance of the population; that, by finding the exact sampling distribution of such an estimate, we may make allowance for its sampling errors, so as to obtain a test of significance which, in spite of these errors, is exact and rigorous. He thus rendered obsolete the restriction that the sample must be "sufficiently large", a restriction vaguely adumbrated by some previous writers, and ignored by others. The claim that "Students" result is rigorous and exact has, of course, been resented by advocates of "large sample" methods." And further: One immense advantage which "Student" possessed was his concern with, and responsibility for, the practical interpretation of experimental data. If more mathematicians shared this advantage there can be no doubt that mathematical research would be more fruitfully directed than it often is. Florence Nightingale David was named after Florence Nightingale who raised nursing to a profession and was also a famous statistician. She invented the pie chart for example. When she tired of arguing with the English Generals for better field hospitals and antiseptic methods, she would take a holiday in the country. She stayed with the Davis family and they named their daughter after her. F. N. David became a famous statistician. Sir Ronald Fisher (1890-1962) on his desk calculator at Whittinghome Lodge 1952, from "R. A. Fisher, The Life of a Scientist," John Wiley & Sons 1978. The author thought Fisher was the greatest statistician of all time when he went to England to study under Professor George Barnard, Fishers disciple. Sir Ronald Fisher was a genius and dominated both statistics and genetics during his lifetime. He developed most of what we know as engineering statistics including maximum likelihood estimation, the design of experiments, the theory of randomization, and the analysis of variance. Inspired by Gosset, he developed many of the distributions of small sample statistics. His lifelong war with Karl Pearson and later his son Egon Pearson continues today as a friendly rivalry among the disciples. He was friends with Egon Pearson until Egon (with Jerzy Neyman) invented confidence intervals and tests of hypothesis. He was so opposed to these concepts that the friendship ended. He was outspoken and arrogant, unfriendly by all accounts. Egon Pearsons book "Student" is an excellent documentary of the trilogy: Karl Pearson, Ronald Fisher and William Gosset. The author now rates Gosset the greatest, with Fisher second greatest. Professor George Barnard wrote in Fishers obituary about his contributions to the theory and practice of statistics: "to assess the contributions made to a subject by one largely responsible for its creation would be futile."

Egon Sharpe Pearson (1895-1980). The author was privileged to have attended many Royal Statistical Society meetings in London with Egon Pearson. There was often friendly interaction between Egon, George Barnard, Jeffries, D.R.Cox, G. Jenkins, and visitors like G.E.P Box from America. Solutions from all three schools, Ronald Fishers, Karl and Egon Pearsons, and Bayesian were compared, sometimes vigorously. Egon with Jerzy Neyman invented the frequency confidence interval school of inference, which ended his friendship with Fisher who despised the concept. The concept of tests of significance and the null hypothesis are among his other contributions. He had great admiration for his dear friend, William Gosset, and in his final years he started a book about Gosset, ["Student"] which my professor, George Barnard, finished after Egon passed on. He was a gentleman and a wonderful teacher. Even though the author shares Fisher and Deming"s negative views on confidence intervals, I have always admired Egon Pearson and frequently use his Biometrica Tables. Jerzy Neyman (1894-1981) is considered to be one of great founders of modern statistics. He made large contributions in probability theory, testing hypothesis, confidence intervals, generalized chi-square, and other areas of mathematical statistics. He was born Jerzy Neyman in Bendery, Russia. Neyman was forced to move to Poland due to the war between Poland and Russia. Neyman was 27 at the time. In Poland, Neyman worked with W. Sierpinski before moving to London in 1924. Neyman studied under Karl Pearson while in London. He also made contacts with Egon Pearson, R. A. Fisher, and W. S. Gosset while at University College. By 1934, Karl Pearson had retired and his department was divided between his son Egon and Fisher. Egon invited Neyman to work with him. They worked on the theory of testing hypotheses. They supplied logical foundation and mathematical rigor to the theory that was missing in previous methodology. Their work was disputed by some mathematicians, including Fisher. The Neyman-Pearson ideas eventually spread throughout mathematics. Their ideas made sure that samples were large enough to avoid false representation. The theory of estimation by confidence sets was Neymans next topic of choice. He used confidence intervals to guarantee that the probability of covering the true value of the parameter to be estimated was at least equal to a preassigned value called the confidence coefficient. His uses soon appeared in many textbooks and works on statistical methodology. In 1937 Neyman accepted a position at the University of California-Berkeley. He was asked to start a statistics department at Berkeley. Many people question his decision, but Neyman took the position because he was fearful of Hitler and the start of World War II. It was at Berkeley, were he spent half of his life, that he came up with his BAN (best asymptotically normal) estimation theory. The BAN estimates now widely used in a manner similar to the use of least squares. Here is a summary comment by another great statistician: W E Deming was at University College in the 1930s, and described the scene in a letter written at the time: Karl Pearson and R A Fisher disagree almost to the point of taking up arms on some questions in statistics. K Pearson has no use for Student, either. Student and R A Fisher stand together. Fisher can say nothing good of Neyman and Pearson. I have heard from all sources that Egon Pearson is really a prince of a fellow. Who introduced his test for independence for 2-way contingency tables in 1900? Answer: Karl Pearson When Karl Pearson introduced this test he was incorrect in the degrees of freedom he used. Who corrected him? Answer: R.A. Fisher