Drawing the Boundaries: Mathematical Statistics in 20th-Century America

Hunter, Patti Wilger

doi:10.1006/hmat.1996.0002

Cited by 16 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…In the USA, the discussion about the need of mathematics in statistics training was the subject of two sessions at the American Statistical Association (ASA) meeting in 1925. The following year, the discussion was summarised in the December issue of the Journal of the ASA (Glover, ; Hunter, ). The voices for inclusion of mathematics were H. L. Rietz and A. R. Crathorne, while other authors did not consider mathematics particularly important in statistics training.…”

Section: Statistics And/or Mathematical Statisticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why Distinguish Between Statistics and Mathematical Statistics–The Case of Swedish Academia

Guttorp

Lindgren

2018

Int Statistical Rev

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Summary A separation between the academic subjects statistics and mathematical statistics has existed in Sweden almost as long as there have been statistics professors. The same distinction has not been maintained in other countries. Why has it been kept for so long in Sweden, and what consequences may it have had? In May 2015, it was 100 years since Mathematical Statistics was formally established as an academic discipline at a Swedish university where Statistics had existed since the turn of the century. We give an account of the debate in Lund and elsewhere about this division during the first decades after 1900 and present two of its leading personalities. The Lund University astronomer (and mathematical statistician) C. V. L. Charlier was a leading proponent for a position in mathematical statistics at the university. Charlier's adversary in the debate was Pontus Fahlbeck, professor in political science and statistics, who reserved the word statistics for ‘statistics as a social science’. Charlier not only secured the first academic position in Sweden in mathematical statistics for his former PhD student Sven Wicksell but also demonstrated that a mathematical statistician can be influential in matters of state, finance as well as in different natural sciences. Fahlbeck saw mathematical statistics as a set of tools that sometimes could be useful in his brand of statistics. After a summary of the organisational, educational and scientific growth of the statistical sciences in Sweden that has taken place during the last 50 years, we discuss what effects the Charlier–Fahlbeck divergence might have had on this development.

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Section: Statistics And/or Mathematical Statisticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why Distinguish Between Statistics and Mathematical Statistics–The Case of Swedish Academia

Guttorp

Lindgren

2018

Int Statistical Rev

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“…Hotelling announced Fisher to a society dominated by economists: in 1928, 69 percent of ASA members were also members of the American Economic Association (Biddle 1999, 631). Historians of statistics have not taken much notice of what American statisticians did in the immediate pre-Fisher era: some are noted by Neyman (1976), Patti W. Hunter (1996), and Stigler (1996) but less for their research than for their role in setting up the Institute of Mathematical Statistics and the Annals of Mathematical Statistics, institutions that came to life only in the late 1930s following an infusion of European ideas-see sections 4 and 8 below. There were more statisticians than in Britain and more book titles.…”

Section: R a Fisher In Americamentioning

confidence: 99%

The Econometricians' Statisticians, 1895–1945

Aldrich¹

2010

History of Political Economy

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"Modern statistical theory originated in England, and is today advancing faster there than in any other country." So Harold Hotelling (1930a, 186) informed the American Statistical Association after a visit in 1929. Hotelling traced the origins to Karl Pearson and attributed the current progress to R. A. Fisher. A few years later there were two new theorists to watch, Jerzy Neyman and Abraham Wald, Fisher's main rivals/successors in the theory of statistical inference. I will be considering these four and how they interacted with the econometricians-with H. L. Moore, Mordecai Ezekiel, Henry Schultz, Tjalling Koopmans, and Trygve Haavelmo especially. I also note some statisticians who might have been, but were not, the econometricians' statisticians.Research in the history of econometrics has concentrated-naturally enough-on the distinctive concepts developed by econometricians, "structure" and "identifi cation" being outstanding instances, but the history of econometrics is also a history of using ideas from statistics. These ideas and how they traveled will be my concern; more broadly, I will be considering the way statisticians and econometricians worked together, or,

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“…After 1920, a number of mathematicians in the United States were drawn to work in statistics. Among the historians of this era, Hogg (1986), Hunter (1996, 1999), and Stigler (1996) together have more than adequately covered the penetration of the study of statistics into the United States in the 1920s and 1930s. Here the object is to look only at Karl Pearson's influence.…”

Section: Mathematical Statistics After 1920mentioning

confidence: 99%

Karl Pearson's Influence in the United States

Bellhouse¹

2009

Int Statistical Rev

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Karl Pearson, the founder of mathematical statistics, was the leading statistical researcher from the 1890s up to about 1920. His interests were wide-ranging and so his impact on statistics in the United States was also wide-ranging. Many American researchers came to University College London to study with him. Others studied his work from afar. In the United States, Pearsonian statistics first penetrated the academic landscape in biology. This was soon followed by the fields of economics and psychology. It was not until relatively late in Pearson's career that several American mathematicians took up statistics as a serious research topic. Copyright (c) 2009 The Author. Journal compilation (c) 2009 International Statistical Institute.

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Drawing the Boundaries: Mathematical Statistics in 20th-Century America

Cited by 16 publications

References 20 publications

Why Distinguish Between Statistics and Mathematical Statistics–The Case of Swedish Academia

Why Distinguish Between Statistics and Mathematical Statistics–The Case of Swedish Academia

The Econometricians' Statisticians, 1895–1945

Karl Pearson's Influence in the United States

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