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SPEAKER: |
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TITLE: |
"A 1-Credit Course on the History of Statistics" |
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DAY: |
Friday, October 22, 1999 |
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TIME: |
2:30 p.m. |
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PLACE: |
BSB-101 |
There are several reasons for studying the history of statistics, e.g. (a) intrinsic interest in how statistics developed, (b) learning from often brilliant ideas and not re-inventing the wheel, and (c) livening up general courses in statistics by reference to important contributors. The texts by A. Hald (1990, 1998) and S. Stigler (1986) are invaluable in such a study. These and other reference books will be noted. The talk will concentrate on my experiences in introducing a 1-credit course on the history of statistics at Iowa State University. A special emphasis of the course is the examination of selected pioneering papers by Laplace and Gauss (in translation) and by later authors, up to R. A. Fisher.
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H. A. David is Emeritus Distinguished Professor in Liberal Arts and Sciences in the Department of Statistics & Statistical Laboratory at Iowa State University. He received his Ph.D. in 1953 from the University of London. His interests include order statistics, statistical inference, and nonparametric statistics. |
The following references have been suggested by Dr David to be used as background for his talk. They will be placed on reserve.
Hald, Anders (1990) A history of probability and statistics and their applications before 1750. Wiley. [Thode library QA 273 .A4 H35 1990]
Stigler, Stephen M. (1986) The history of statistics: the measurement of uncertainty before 1900. Belknap Press. [Mills library QA 276.15 .S75 1986]
