Questions tagged [statistics]
For questions about the science that deals with classification, analysis and interpretation of numerical facts and data.
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Data that motivated early discussions about the mean and about error distributions
The way in which scientists should deal with errors in observations of natural phenomena was a subject of much debate over a period of about 150 years between around 1720 and 1870. The history is well ...
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Did Ronald Fisher ever say anything on varying the threshold of significance level?
There has been a growing chorus against the conventional NHST (Null Hypothesis Significance Testing). One thing is the blind usage of a monolithic significance level $5\%.$
In a recent thread at CV, ...
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Why is the standard deviation bias correction factor called c₄?
The term to remove bias from an estimate of standard deviation for a normal distribution is referred to as $c_4$.
What is the origin or reason for using that notation for the correction factor?
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Who coined the term "signal-to-noise ratio" and when did statisticians start using the term "noise" to describe randomness?
I'm writing about the history of the concept of noise and am having trouble tracking down references from when the term "noise" started being associated with statistical noise such as ...
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Where to find average man/woman drawings as proposed by Quetelet?
Where to find average man/woman drawings as proposed by Adolphe Quetelet? Drawings along the years would be very nice. He proposed the idea of average man in 1835 (see https://historyofinformation.com/...
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Were many (famous) theoretical laws in science based on "Statistical Regression"?
In a essay about the meaning of life, the famous scientist Schrodinger once said "Physical laws rest on atomic statistics and are therefore only approximate" (http://www.whatislife.ie/...
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Historical examples of frauds discovered because someone tried to mimic a uniform random sequence
So, I'm preparing a talk about the well known fact that humans are bad at the task of generating uniformly random sequences of numbers when asked to do so.
I would like to spice the talk a bit by ...
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What factors influence whether an invention is not patented?
Various inventions that have become well-known were never patented, including matches, emoticons, and the magnetic strip. Other noteworthy examples include the polio vaccine (Jonas Salk), monoclonal ...
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When did E. Hopf say "ergodic theory is statistics and statistics is measure theory"?
In the archived version of Kolmogorov's Foundations of the Theory of Probability, at the very end of the book, p. $84,$ few books have been listed, one being E. Hopf's Ergodentheorie, where it is ...
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Why Was Sequential Analysis Classified?
In the Introduction of his "Sequential Analysis" Wald writes that
Because of the usefulness of the sequential probability ratio test in
development work on military and naval equipment, it ...
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Kolmogorov on frequentists versus Bayesians
What was Kolmogorov's attitude regarding the frequentist versus Bayesian statistics controversies? Did he ever write or speak about his own views on Fisher or de Finetti, Jeffreys, etc.? Or were those ...
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What is the S notation in Student's The Probable Error of a Mean?
In William S. Gosset's The Probable Error of a Mean (JSTOR), he begins to derive the $t$ sampling distribution as follows.
Samples of $n$ individuals are drawn out of a population distributed ...
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What is the earliest use of the $\perp\!\!\!\!\perp$ symbol in statistics to denote statistical independence?
The symbol $\perp\!\!\!\!\perp$ in statistics is a way to denote statistical independence of a collection of random variables. I have seen two forms of it. The first is highly suitable in writing ...
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Can anyone recommend sources on the standardisation of research methods in modern (20th-21st c) science?
I’m interested in learning more about how statistical methodology and research design has changed over the course of the 20th and 21st century. I’m particularly interested in ways in which research ...
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Where does the abomination that is probability notation come from? [closed]
Those with experience may deny it, having suffered too long ago. But it stares you in the face with the somnolent, expressionless eyes of every student being exposed the first time. Probability ...
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