Statistics: The Main Players, Events, and RepercussionsSusan McCourtBristol Community CollegeFall River, MA AMATYC 2012
Name GameHonors Section of Elementary Statistics course
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Agenda
Brought mathematical rigor to biologyRealized uniqueness of fingerprints,
designed methods to classify and identify them
Set up a biometrical lab in LondonDiscovered “coefficient of correlation”
first using the word correlation in this sense
Discovered “regression to the mean” Invented bean machine to
demonstrate the Central Limit Theorem
Eugenicist coined the term and the phrase “Nature vs. Nurture”
Cousin of Charles DarwinDevised the first weather map……
Sir Francis Galton
Born 1857 and in 1870s left England to study political science in Germany
1880s published The Grammar of Science Worked in Galton’s Biometrical Lab in
London Looked at distributions of numbers and
said ALL “skew distributions” can be described by the mean, standard deviation, symmetry and kurtosis (later called the parameters)
Proposed the radical idea that the observed was random – the distribution is real
With Galton and Raphael Welton founded the journal Biometrika
Considered a prominent “freethinker” and lectured on suffrage and Karl Marx
Refused a knighthood in 1935 Changed his name to honor Karl Marx…..
Karl Pearson
Oxford Graduate in Chemistry and Math
Recruited by Arthur Guinness and Son: applied to picking best yielding varieties of barley
His data modeled by Poisson Distribution – NOT a Pearson Skew Distribution
Leave of absence to study with Pearson
Discovered Pearson’s need for large samples not necessary (and usually not available)
Used ratios of estimated values of µ and σ
Published as “Student” about this t-distribution in Biometrika
Friend of both Pearson and Fisher …..
William Sealy Gossett
English statistician, evolutionary biologist, eugenicist, and geneticist
Childhood vision impairment - deep geometric sense
Calculated a geometric solution to difficult unsolved problem by Pearson
Pearson and friends froze him out Joined the Eugenics movement in 1917 –
contrast with Pearson
Published “Statistical Methods for Research Workers” - methods, not proofs
Agricultural Experiments at Rothamsted produced Studies in Crop Variation I-VI showing original tools for data analysis and applications
Developed time-series experiments, randomized controlled experiments, analysis of variance (ANOVA), analysis of covariance, degrees of freedom…..
(Ronald Aylmer) R.A. Fisher
Born in 1902 in London, graduated from Imperial college with a degree in Physics
Studied for his MS in statistics under Pearson at the Galton Lab and Fisher at Rothamsted
Worked at the British Cotton Industry Research Association
Examining thread under a microscope, discovered the fiber is only as strong as it’s weakest thread
Pioneered extreme value theory Invented the Random Number Table Found equation to connect distribution of
extremes to distribution of sample data, later solved by R.A. Fisher…
(Leonard Henry Cabot)
L.H.C. Tippett
Mathematician and political writer Graduated from the University of Munich
shortly before World War I Late 1920s-early 1930s, new faculty at the
University of Heidelberg, saw a friend attacked and killed by the Brown Shirts Nazis. Court found insufficient evidence to convict.
In 1922, published Four Years of Political Murder, documenting dozens of cases
In 1928, he published Causes of Political Murder, documenting more cases.
One of the 33 signers of Dringender Appel – “Urgent Call for Unity” appeal to defeat the Nazis
Nazis forced him out of his position and he settled in France. In 1940 escaped to the U.S. and taught at New School, Columbia University
1958 published Statistics of Extremes ….
Emil J. Gumbel
US Biologist born in Springfield, Ohio Entomologist hired by USDA developing
pesticides With Fisher developed an iterative
approach to finding maximum likelihood estimates in the probit method of bioassay: studies potency based on effects on living matter (probit = bimodal)
Fired during the depression for political reasons
Worked in Leningrad Later rumored a spy, and interrogated by
committee from Leningrad Hurriedly escaped to Riga Joined the Communist Labor Union of
Laboratory workers (as did all), in the 1950s was denied access back to United States ….
Chester (Ittner) Bliss
The Rise of Totalitarian States
Stalin terror cut off Russian mathematicians
Hitler’s racial views decimated Universities Nazis went to U of Warsaw and murdered
all Russian mathematicians “hid” in pure
math Many promising students perished
The Rise of Totalitarian States
The War Effort
Because “random variable” translates in Russian to “accidental magnitude” it was considered an insult to Marx.
Growth in Cryptanalysis and Stochastic Processes
Birth of Operations Research: embraced by the British and the United States
Under Russian planning the farmlands of Ukraine and Belorussia were ruined while quality control was increasing output in the U.S., European and some Asian farms
The War Effort
Back to the Statisticians….
Born in Finland in 1914 (which was part of the Russian Empire), family moved to Denmark, then Berlin.
1933 finished H.S. and studied math in Berlin as faculty were fleeing
Attended Bieberbach Lecture dealt with “Aryan” and “Non-Aryan” (Jewish) mathematics.
1940, graduated and took a job in an actuarial institute.
1945 fled with his mother – his father captured, accused as a spy. 1946 – came to U.S. with his mother
One of the founders of nonparametric statistics
Contributed the idea and basic results on U-statistics (U for unbiased, important in estimation theory)
Wassily Hoeffding
Born in Poland – descended from a long line of nobles and military heroes
Promising student when WWI erupted. Forced to study at Kharkov U
1921 returned to Poland in a program of repatriation of POWs
Studied in London and Paris with Pearson and Emile Borel
Proposed and studies randomized experiments in 1923
1928 worked at Biometrical lab in London and befriended Egon Pearson and letters between them 1928-33 published, resulting in the basic ideas of Hypothesis Testing, “Power” of a test
Appendix to a paper named and used Confidence Intervals
Started statistics program at UC Berkeley Brought Blackwell to Berkeley Helped many female statisticians find
positions and published with many female mathematicians…
Jerzey Neyman
Andrey Nikolaevich Kolmogorov
Celebrated statistician and social reformer Founder of the British Nursing program Worked to abolish laws harsh to women
and to expand acceptable forms of female participation in the workforce
Self-educated statistician
Used data, charts and graphs to force the British army to maintain field hospitals and supply nursing and medical care to soldiers in the field
Invented the Pie Chart to display her message
First female member of the Royal Statistical Society
Florence Nightengale
Named after Florence Nightingale Applied to be an actuary at an insurance
company and told she was the most qualified, but did not get the job because of her gender
Many similar disappointments, even being told there were no toilet facilities for women
“Crashed” her way in to met Karl Pearson, who liked her and gave her a job where she calculated distribution of the Correlation Coefficient using a Brunsviga
Pearson made sure her scholarship was extended and encouraged her
During WWII worked predicting effects of bombs, helping London prepare for the Blitz
Wrote “Combinatorial Chance” and “Games, God and Gambling” classic probability books
On Faculty of UC Berkeley and succeeded Neyman as chair
F.N. David
American who attended Douglas College (Women’s branch of Rutgers)
PhD from Tufts Was a stay at home mother until youngest
went to grade school Worked for the Bureau of Labor Statistics Became in charge of the Consumer Price
Index and oversaw its overhaul First woman to be named Commissioner
of Labor Statistics in 1991…
Janet Norwood
Homeschooled in New Bedford, MA BS, MA from Brown in Chemistry PhD from Princeton at 24 His lemma - stated conditions behind use
of logic in Problem Solving 1950s – developed Fast Fourier Transform
– a smoothing technique for data Developed stem-leaf plot, boxplot, and
more Coined the words “software” and “bit”
John Tukey
Questions? Comments? Material from this presentation primarily
taken from The Lady Tasting Tea: How Statistics Revolutionized Science in the Twentieth Century by David Salsburg (2001, W.H. Freeman)
My email: [email protected]
In Conclusion
American mathematician and statistician Contribute to foundations of analysis of
variance, data analysis, experimental design and methodology
Headed for University of Iowa, but ended up in Iowa State and created the first statistics laboratory
Worked with underprepared students for 6 years before he created a statistics course
Created the first Statistics Department Also promoted the work of women, helping
them get positions…
George Snedecor
Born in Jewish slum of Whitechapel London December 1916
Genius child, entered Cambridge at 19 and 6yrs later earned his PhD
Used Bayesian methods for cryptanalysis for English Government
Important figure in adoption of computers in code breaking
? IJ (Jack) Good
Homeschooled in New Bedford, MA BS, MA from Brown in Chemistry PhD from Princeton at 24 His lemma - stated conditions behind use of logic
in Problem Solving 1950s – developed Fast Fourier Transform – a
smoothing technique for data Developed stem-leaf plot, boxplot, and more Coined the words “software” and “bit” Proposed box-shape counting technique ? John Tukey
Born in Sioux City Iowa in 1900 Attended U of Wyoming Masters from U of Colorado, PhD Yale Worked for USDA for 12 years Then ran seminars on Quality Control for Industry 1947 invited to be expert on sampling methods for
Supreme Allied Commander Douglas MacArthur Invited to teach statistical methods by Ichiro Ishikawa
to a broad range of Japanese industries 1980 NBC Documentary Highly critical of hypothesis testing – said it mattered
how significant the difference is ? W. Edward Deming
English amateur mathematician, 18th Century
Said all probability is conditional Looked at symmetry of the conditional
probability formula His work used for estimating parameters of
distributions His work considered “heresy” during the
early years of the 20h century Worked on a Hierarchical Model and a
Personal probability Model…..
Reverend Thomas Bayes
Studied chemistry at a technical college before being drafted into WWII
Put in a chemical defense experiment station, looking for antidotes to chemical gases
Read books to learn the statistics, then attended University College Masters and Doctorate
At Princeton, led the Statistical Techniques Research Group Used ‘robust’ for useful methods found even if a distribution
doesn’t meet initial conditions Showed the average is heavily influenced even by a single
outlier Box-Cox Transformations used in cancer research,
econometrics, and agriculture ? George Box
Interested in studying Applied Mathematics when it wasn’t popular to do so
On the faculty of Princeton, became editor of Annals of Mathematical Statistics, raising the standards of publication
Effective mentor of many graduate students Went to work for Educational Testing Service, helped
formulate sampling procedures and scoring techniques Consulted with the Office of Naval Research and set
up the Statistical Research Group – Princeton and The National Defense Research Council
? Samuel S. Wilks
Born to Greek immigrant in NYC Loved Martin Gardener puzzles, later met MG Ran away at 14 to follow a traveling magician
for 2 years Was a traveling magician until 24 At 26 earned his Bachelors from CCNY PhD from Harvard at 29 Studied the structure of the computer and of
mathematical statistics, data clusters in lower dimensions
? Persi Hiaconis
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