Statistics

- A Brief History of Elective Statistics -

 “Statistics”
 statisticum collegium (“council of state”)

 statista (“statesman” or “politician”)

 18th Century, designated the systematic collection

of demographic and economic data by states.

 Broadened in 1800s to include the collection,

summary, and analysis of data of any type.
 Gottfried Achenwall
 Statistik

 German university,
1749

 Political science
of different
countries
 Early examples of

Statistical
inference
 5th Century B.C.
Athenians estimated the height of ladders by
having multiple soldiers count the bricks, then
multiplying the most frequent count by the
height of a brick.
 801-873 A.D.
Al-Kindi wrote “Manuscript on Deciphering
Cryptographic Messages” which showed how to
use frequency analysis to decipher encrypted
messages.
 1662
John Graunt
estimated the
population of
London as 384 000
using records.
 Modern Statistics
Late 19th and Early 10th Century; 3 stages:

1. Francis Galton, Karl Pearson – analysis in industry

and politics as well.

2. William Gosset, Ronald Fisher (1910s and 20s) – better

design of experiments models, hypothesis testing and
techniques for use with small data samples.

3. Egon Pearson and Jerzy Neyman (1930s) – refinement and

expansion of earlier developments.
Today, statistical methods are
applied in all fields that involve
decision making, for making
accurate inferences from a
collated body of data and for
making decisions in the face of
uncertainty based on statistical
methodology.