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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Are statistics racist?
Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) is a proposition and an area of study of medicine for which I am very fond. However, a few days ago, talking to some friends, I was confronted with a very critical ...
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Why some calculations noted as "sym^2" and "sym", while others noted as "symA" and "symB", where "symB" is the square root of "symA"?
Today I learnt that the standard deviation is calculated as square root of the mean of the squares of the deviations from the arithmetic mean of the distribution. The mean of the squares of the ...
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Why was the term random "variable" applied to a mapping?
I think I'm correct in saying a random variable is a mapping from the sample space to the real line (or more generally to $\mathbb{R}^n$. If I'm right then random variable seems a very odd way for a ...
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Who said that math or statistics is not free from class interest?
I'm not 100% sure this is the right site for this question, but here it goes.
An already dead professor said in a lecture that Stalin (or perhaps another communist leader) wrote once something along ...
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Did Egon Pearson have a PhD?
Did the statistician Egon Pearson have a PhD? If not, to what extent did he write a dissertation?
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Who was the first person to propose the idea that consciousness arises from complexity?
The origin of consciousness has been a major scientific and philosophic debate since ever. Sometimes the origin is considered a philosophical issue, while others consider it a physics issue.
Most ...
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Where can I find the historical information or the stats related to Winning WW2 with the minimum actions using The Bombe Machine of Alan Turing?
I am doing a marathon of data visualizations with real world datasets. I am interested in historical war datasets.
Does anybody know about the historical data on The Bombe Machine cracking the codes ...
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Markov chains origins and how is Christianity involved
In a book called Advanced Data Analysis from an Elementary Point of View by Cosma Rohilla Shalizi, page 405, the first instance of "Markov process" is accompanied by a footnote which reads
...
John Cataldo
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In which work was Gibbs' Inequality introduced?
Gibbs' inequality
$$-\sum\limits_{i=1}^n p_{i} \cdot \log{p_{i}} \le -\sum\limits_{i=1}^n p_{i} \cdot \log{q_{i}}$$
is such a popular thing that I cannot find where it was introduced.
My findings
I ...
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How long have people been debunking the P value (statistical significance) as commonly used in the human sciences: medicine, psychology and so on?
I have been puzzled for a long time at the way psychologists and medical researchers state that they have 'significant' results, and at the way this statement is relayed to the public who are misled ...
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Examples of when statistical distributions like Binomial or Normal distribution was critical in a law/policy decision, in a court case or otherwise
This was closed as off-topic on math.se, and it was suggested I post this here, so here goes.
Firstly, I am aware that this thread exists, and I'll definitely be ordering a copy of the book, "...
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Stories about the consequences of statistical simplification?
I am currently preparing a presentation about the value of more complex (specically: non-Gaussian) statistical inference. I thought it might be interesting to start the presentation with a small real-...
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Where was statistics taught in the 17th and 18th centuries?
Here is a fragment from Anders Hald's A History of Probability and Statistics and Their Applications before 1750:
The original meaning of statistics is thus a collection of facts of interest to a ...
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Why is William Playfair seldom heard about in mathematics?
William Playfair was a Scottish engineer and economist, who invented the pie and bar charts as well as the line graph, which have all played an indubitably ubiquitous role in modern statistics.
I hadn'...
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How was mathematics used in World War II to "act on the right amount of intelligence"?
In the movie "The Imitation Game", Alan Turing along with his team crack the German encryption machine Enigma but advises his superiors to not act on all decrypted intelligence, as that might lead to ...
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