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American Statistical Association History of Statistics @hos-asa.bsky.social · 15h

Happy 🎂 to James Lind b #OTD 1716 (d 3 July 1794) A Scottish physician, he is best known for conducting what is often regarded as the first modern clinical trial, a comparative test of treatments for scurvy. 1/11 🧵

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American Statistical Association History of Statistics @hos-asa.bsky.social · 17h

#OTD 1841 Thomas Corwin Mendenhall b (d 22 Mar 1924) He was father of “author profiling”, the use of word frequency distributions to identify individual writer styles. He kicked off the Shakespeare authorship question by proposing Sir Francis Bacon and Kit Marlow as the 'true authors.

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American Statistical Association History of Statistics @hos-asa.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Referring to the normal distribution as a bell curve may have originated with Esprit Jouffret in 1872 (he called it a 'Cloche’). Francis Edgeworth called it the 'gend'arme's hat' 1888. He went on to describe other distributions in terms of a whole cupboardful of hats

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American Statistical Association History of Statistics @hos-asa.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

In his paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" published #OTD 1950 Alan Turing proposes a practical test of the question "Can machines think?" A machine passes if a human interrogator cannot reliably distinguish its responses to a text-based test from those of a human - the Turing test

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American Statistical Association History of Statistics @hos-asa.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Donald Preece b #OTD 1938 (d 6 Jan 2014) Fellow RSS 1963. A champion of experimental design& statistics education. He often complained about the over-emphasis on “mathematically-oriented teaching” at the expense of practicalities of study planning, design, data collection, & data cleaning.

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American Statistical Association History of Statistics @hos-asa.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

#WomeninStatistics Dame Kathleen Ollerenshaw b #OTD 1912. First F president of Manchester Statistical Society 1981-3 (& member for 70 years, 1944-2014). A well-known mathematician she used statistics to influence government policy on social issues, improved school standards and girls’ education.

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American Statistical Association History of Statistics @hos-asa.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Math or Maths? Unlike Americans, UK users keep the S in the short version of “mathematics”. Adding an S to field-of-study nouns (physics, economics) began in the 18th cent. Because it denotes entities that cannot be counted, the S is not a pluraliser but a “deadbeat second S” (as in “mass”)

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American Statistical Association History of Statistics @hos-asa.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Harold Hotelling b #OTD 1895 (d 26 Dec 1973) ASA Fellow 1937. A pioneer in mathematical statistics & economics he was also first to recognise the revolutionary importance of Fisher’s 'Statistical Methods for Research Workers' for applied statistics

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American Statistical Association History of Statistics @hos-asa.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

#OTD 1937 Olimpiy Kvitkin (b 30 Oct 1874) chief Soviet statistician was shot on the order of Stalin. Th official census reports proved the reality of the 1932 Soviet famine The Holodomor resulting from Stalin's disastrous forced agricultural collectivization programmes.

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American Statistical Association History of Statistics @hos-asa.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

#WomenInStatistics Hilda Geiringer-von Mises b #OTD 1893 (d 22 March 1973) IMS Fellow. A first-rate mathematical statistics scholar, she is also a ‘missed genius’. A refugee from Nazi-occupied Europe she was denied a permanent faculty position at US research universities because of her gender.

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American Statistical Association History of Statistics @hos-asa.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

#WomenInStatistics Edith Abbott b #OTD 1876 (d 28 Jul 1957) ASA Fellow 1945. One of the 1st F deans in the US, she pioneered statistical methods applied to policy development for welfare, education & protections for immigrants, working women & children

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American Statistical Association History of Statistics @hos-asa.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Harold Cramér b #OTD 1893 (d 5 Oct 1985) ASA Fellow 1950, RSS Guy Gold Medal 1972. Called one of the giants of statistical theory" he is known for Cramér-Rao inequality, Cramér-von Mises statistics, Cramér-Levey theorem

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American Statistical Association History of Statistics @hos-asa.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

In Sept 1949 the Monte Carlo sampling method was formally introduced by Stanislaw Ulam & Nicholas Metropolis. Ulam got the idea from playing solitaire during recovery from surgery. Metropolis gave it the cool name because Ulam used to talk about his uncle who liked to go to Monte Carlo to gamble

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American Statistical Association History of Statistics @hos-asa.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

If you are visiting Canterbury, forget about Thomas a Becket and the Cathedral! Here is the blue plaque marking the birthplace of William Seeley Gosset (aka Student) in 1876

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American Statistical Association History of Statistics @hos-asa.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

#WomenInStatistics Mary Gibbons Natrella b #OTD 1922 (d May 18 1988) ASA Fellow 1981; 1982 Department of Commerce Bronze Medal. Her updated (now online) Handbook of Experimental Statistics (NBS Handbook 91) is a first class resource for statistically based experimental designs

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American Statistical Association History of Statistics @hos-asa.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

William Playfair b #OTD 1759 (d 11 Feb 1823) A Scottish engineer from a famous family he invented or improved numerous statistical graphics methods still used today, including line, area, bar & pie graphs.

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American Statistical Association History of Statistics @hos-asa.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

The First International Statistical Congress began in Brussels #OTD 1853. Organized by Adolph Quetelet it was intended to standardize statistical methods & measurement across different countries. Not much was accomplished b/c of quarrels over agenda, language, & accusations of data misrepresentation

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American Statistical Association History of Statistics @hos-asa.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Adrien-Marie Legendre b #OTD 1752 (d 9 Jan 1833) An early developing the method of least squares (méthode des moindres carrés) published 1806 in the appendix to his book on comet motion. This caricature by Julien-Léopold Boilly is the only known authenticated portrait of him

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American Statistical Association History of Statistics @hos-asa.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

🎂 John McCarthy b #OTD 1927 (d 24 Oct 2011) one of the founders of the discipline of artificial intelligence, for which he received the 1971 Turing Award, the US National Medal of Science, and the Kyoto Prize.

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American Statistical Association History of Statistics @hos-asa.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

James Joseph Sylvester b #OTD 1814 (d 15 Mar 1897) A pioneer of graph theory he also modestly claimed to be the Mathematical Adam, coining more terms “than all the other mathematicians of the age combined” e.g. ‘matrix’ ‘discriminant’ ‘canonical form’, ‘hessian’ ‘latent roots’, ‘Jacobian’

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American Statistical Association History of Statistics @hos-asa.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Frank Wilcoxon b #OTD 1892 (d 18 Nov 1965) ASA Fellow 1955. Best known for his nonparametric rank-sum and signed-rank tests. An enthusiastic cyclist, in his 70s he shifted to a Honda motorcycle to get to work at Florida State University campus

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American Statistical Association History of Statistics @hos-asa.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Today 1 September we celebrate birthdays of Three Notable #WomeninStatistics: Olive Jean Dunn, Besse Day (Mauss) and Helen Abbey 🧵

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American Statistical Association History of Statistics @hos-asa.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Edward Thorndike b #OTD 1874 (d 9 Aug 1949) Psychologist. ASA Fellow 1917, one of the first that wasn’t an economist. A pioneer of animal models in comparative psychology, he didn’t like animals much, calling them ‘stupid’. He seemingly had no use for most people either 1/2

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American Statistical Association History of Statistics @hos-asa.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

#OTD 31 Aug 1918 Major André-Louis Cholesky dies of combat wounds. His matrix decomposition method for solving systems of n linear equations is published posthumously by Ernest Benoît in 1924. In 1948 Alan Turing demonstrates the stability of the method for large-n machine computations.

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American Statistical Association History of Statistics @hos-asa.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

#WomenInStatistics #OTD 1907 Ruth Rice Puffer b #OTD 1907 (d 2 Sep 2002) ASA Fellow 1966, public health biostatistician & head of the Pan American Health Organization Department of Health Statistics. On their 100th anniversary PAHO listed her in the top 100 "public health heroes".

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American Statistical Association History of Statistics @hos-asa.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

#WomenInStatistics Julie E Backer b #OTD 1890 (d 31 Dec 1977) ISI Fellow 1948, bureau chief for the Norwegian Central Bureau of Statistics 1936–1956 & an influential researcher on public health, infant mortality, & population statistics.

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American Statistical Association History of Statistics @hos-asa.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Researchers exaggerating scientific claims without substantive evidence & accepting claims as true without doing due diligence seems to be a modern thing. Not so: in 1605 Francis Bacon complains about exactly that (what he calls a “contract of error”) in his book An Advancement of Learning

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American Statistical Association History of Statistics @hos-asa.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

In Aug 1934 Harold Jeffreys first expresses the idea of Bayesian probability in his paper "Probability and Scientific Method". He argues that that it is not necessarily synonymous with frequency but based on a logical degree of prior belief given the data. Ronald Fisher of course rejected this idea

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American Statistical Association History of Statistics @hos-asa.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

#WomenInStatistics Jeanne Ridley b #OTD 1925 (d 17 Jul 2007) ASA Fellow 1976, professor of sociology, she was a frequent collaborator with Mindel Sheps (ASA Fellow 1970) on research in human demography, fertility, natality, & population dynamics.

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American Statistical Association History of Statistics @hos-asa.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

#WomenInStatistics Ethel May Newbold b # OTD 1882 (d 25 Mar 1933). First woman to be awarded the Guy Silver Medal in 1928 for her work on the epidemiology of industrial accidents. In 2014 the Bernoulli Society established the Ethel Newbold Prize for excellence in mathematical statistics research.

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American Statistical Association History of Statistics @hos-asa.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

#WomenInStatistics Irene Hess b #OTD 1910 (d 5 Jul 2009), ASA Fellow 1972, Director & pioneer of the Institute for Social Research and founding chair of the ASA Section on Survey Research Methods. Frequently collaborated with Leslie Kish on innovating survey sampling methodology

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American Statistical Association History of Statistics @hos-asa.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

#OTD 1904 Cuthbert Daniel b (d 8 AUG 1997), ASA Fellow 1955. He made major contributions to industrial applications of experimental design. He saw the statistical light when his biochemist wife introduced him to Ronald Fisher’s 'Statistical Methods for Research Workers'.

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American Statistical Association History of Statistics @hos-asa.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Happy 🎂Ida Martha Metcalf b #OTD 1857 (d 24 Oct 1952) She graduated from Cornell in 1893 as only the second American woman to earn a PhD in mathematics. She later became a statistician in the NYC Department of Finance where she worked until her retirement in 1921

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American Statistical Association History of Statistics @hos-asa.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Happy 🎂Hilda Mary Woods b #OTD 1892 (d 29 Nov 1971) Royal Statistical Society Fellow 1926, medical statistician, first woman lecturer at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, & coauthor of one of the first textbooks of medical (as opposed to vital) statistics in 1931

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American Statistical Association History of Statistics @hos-asa.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Three birthdays 🎂 of notable statisticians to celebrate today: Henry Lewis Rietz, Charles Dunnett, Kathryn Chaloner 1/4🧵

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American Statistical Association History of Statistics @hos-asa.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

In Aug 1673 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz introduces the term ‘function’ for the first time, but in a non-analytical sense (he refers to analytic expressions as ‘relatio’). In 1698 Johann Bernoulli used ‘function’ for an analytic expression. Euler popularized the use of f(x) notation in 1734.

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American Statistical Association History of Statistics @hos-asa.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

Oops got ahead of myself.🫢 FN David was born on 23 August 1909 not 22 August. My bad🙁

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American Statistical Association History of Statistics @hos-asa.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

Happy🎂Florence Nightingale (FN) David b #OTD 1909 (d 23 Jul 1993) ASA Fellow 1954. Known for pioneering work on combinatorics & history of probability. First winner ASA Elizabeth Scott award for increasing opportunities for women in statistics. Named for Florence Nightingale, a family friend.

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American Statistical Association History of Statistics @hos-asa.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

In Aug 1668 Nicolaus Mercator (né Niklaus Kauffman) publishes the Logarithmotechnica in which he presents the Mercator series ln(1+x) and uses the term ‘natural logarithm’ (logarithmus naturalis) for the first time. He may have pinched the idea from Pietro Mengoli.

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American Statistical Association History of Statistics @hos-asa.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Happy🎂Thomas Simpson b #OTD 1710 (d 14 May 1761) His 1755 paper “On the Advantage of taking the Mean of a Number of Obfervations in Practical Aftronomy” is a milestone in statistical inference, being the earliest attempt to demonstrate the law of large numbers 1/5 🧵

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American Statistical Association History of Statistics @hos-asa.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Happy 🎂 George E Roberts 15th ASA President, b #OTD 1857 (d 6 Jun 1948). An economist, he was long time director of the United States Mint 1898-1907 & 1910-1914

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American Statistical Association History of Statistics @hos-asa.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

In Aug 1931 Harold Hotelling (ASA Fellow 1937) publishes a generalization of Student's t-test for multivariate hypothesis testing. It is now known as Hotelling's T². He also defines ‘probable error’ as what was later called confidence intervals.

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American Statistical Association History of Statistics @hos-asa.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Afternoon Tea Week: Cutting Cake. In 1904 Francis Galton describes how to cut a cake so it presents the least area to the air. Since then game theory-based algorithms have been developed for the fair division of cake - which can also be applied to problems such as international conflict resolution.

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American Statistical Association History of Statistics @hos-asa.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

Afternoon Tea Week Part 3: Cake. Cuthbert Daniel (ASA Fellow 1955) and Mavis Carroll (ASA Fellow 1971) persuade General Foods to perform a giant fractional factorial experiment to investigate "a large number of questions" on cake mixes and baking conditions. 1/2

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American Statistical Association History of Statistics @hos-asa.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

Marjorie O’Connell Shearon b #OTD 1890 (d 13 Nov 1974) A PhD ammonite paleontologist, she reinvented herself as a statistician for the Social Security Board & Public Health Service. She later ranted against nationalized medicine, health insurance, social security and women pursuing careers

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American Statistical Association History of Statistics @hos-asa.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

Kimiko Osada Bowman b #OTD 1927 (d 13 Jan 2019), ASA Fellow 1976, ISI Fellow 1978, IMS Fellow 1987, AAAS Fellow 1970. Pioneered methods for approximating probability distributions of maximum likelihood estimators; developed divergent series algorithms for large computers. 1/2

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American Statistical Association History of Statistics @hos-asa.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Afternoon Tea Week Part 2: In 1872 Francis Galton weighs in with a description of his results of “a number of experiments on the art of making good tea." He boils it down (as it were) to 3 factors: time, quantity, and temperature. Here is Galton aged 22 in his tea phase.

Portrait of Galton aged 22 by Octavius Oakley, 1840 in his tea phase

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American Statistical Association History of Statistics @hos-asa.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

This year Afternoon Tea Week is 10-16 August. Let's talk about Tea and Cake and Statistics! Everyone knows (or ought to) about the famous “lady tasting tea” experiment devised by Ronald Fisher in the 1920s. 1/5 🧵

Teatime at Rothamsted in the 1930s. Fisher (in the days when his hair & beard were still red) is facing the camera on the right

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American Statistical Association History of Statistics @hos-asa.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Happy 🎂Lenore Epstein Bixby b #OTD 1914 ((d 5 Apr 1994), ASA Fellow 1969. She was Deputy Assistant Commissioner Office of Research, Director Division of Retirement and Survivors' Studies, & Committee on National Statistics of the National Academy of Sciences.

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American Statistical Association History of Statistics @hos-asa.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Happy🎂Egon Pearson b #OTD 1895 (d 12 Jun 1980), Royal Statistical Society President 1955, Guy Gold Medal 1955. Codeveloper with Jerzy Neyman of their 1933 lemma for statistical hypothesis testing, & the first explicit consideration of alternative hypotheses, power, & Type I & Type II errors. 1/2

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