HISTORY OF STATISTICS
Math Game Monday: Algebra Match
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Tuesday, March 9, 2010
HISTORY OF STATISTICS
Some scholars pinpoint the origin of statistics to 1663, with the publication of Natural and Political Observations upon the Bills of Mortality by John Graunt.Early applications of statistical thinking revolved around the needs of states to base policy on demographic and economic data, hence its stat- etymology. The scope of the discipline of statistics broadened in the early 19th century to include the collection and analysis of data in general. Today, statistics is widely employed in government, business, and the natural and social sciences. Its mathematical foundations were laid in the 17th century with the development of probability theory by Blaise Pascal and Pierre de Fermat. Probability theory arose from the study of games of chance. The method of least squares was first described by Carl Friedrich Gauss around 1794. The use of modern computers has expedited large-scale statistical computation, and has also made possible new methods that are impractical to perform manually. The American Statistical Association has ranked Deming, Fisher, and Rao as the greatest statisticians of all time.
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