History Of Statistics Essay

Ancient Times (3000 BC – 27 BC) * Pictorial representation and other symbols were used for Statistics back in the days. (To record numbers of people, animals, etc.) * In Babylonia and China, population is already recorded. * Sumerians, record population for taxation purposes. * Egyptians, analyze population and material wealth of the country before building pyramids. * Papyrus – where early scriptures of Statistics were written. * In Biblical times, censuses were done by Moses (1491 BC) followed by David (1017 BC) * In China, during the Zhou Dynasty, censuses were done to evaluate the available people for the army and taxation (1027 to 256 BC) * Ancient Greeks (594 BC) already did censuses * Roman Empire – first one to do expensive data collection. * Servius Tullius, the 6th King of Rome, was given credit for instituting the gathering of population data, who initiated the first census. * King William I, King of England, required the compilation of data completed in 1086 called â€Å"The Domes Day Book† or â€Å"The Book of Winchester† – first book of British statistics 18th Century * Achenwall is the man noted to be the first to introduce the word â€Å"statistics† (1719-1772) * Zimmerman and Sinclair introduced and popularized the name â€Å"statistics† in their books * The method of least squares was first described by Carl Friedrich Gauss around 1794 19th Century * Laplace’s â€Å"Theories Analytique des Probabilities† of 1812 further supported and stabilized the said theory. * The meaning of â€Å"statistics† broadened, then including the discipline concerned with the collection, summary, and analysis of data. * Social scientists used statistical reasoning and probability models to advance the new sciences. * Lambert Adolfe Quetelet applied the theory of probability to anthropological measurements and expanded the same principle to different fields of science. Because of his continued emphasis on the importance of using statistical methods, he is referred to as the â€Å"Father of Modern Statistics†. * Also, he established the Central Commission for Statistics. * Francis Galton (1822-1911) developed the use of percentiles and the correlation method. * Karl Pearson (1857-1936) originated the basic statistical concepts and procedures as standard deviation, the random walk and the chi-squares. * Ronald Aylmer Fisher (1890-1962) contributed in the field of statistics the use of Fisher Test (F-Test), analysis of variance (ANOVA) and covariance in inferential statistics. 20th century * At present, statistics is a reliable means of describing accurately the values of economic, political, social, biological and physical data and serves as tool to analyze such data. Much data can be approximated accurately by certain distributions and the results of probability distributions can be used in analyzing statistical data. Statistics is widely employed in government, business, and the natural and social sciences. Electronic computers have expedited statistical computation, and have allowed statisticians to develop â€Å"computer-intensive† methods.