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- What is statistics
- Analytical software used in statistics
- Branches of statistics
- Limitations of statistics
- Functions of statistics in real life situations
- Application of statistics
- Understanding probability distribution
- Understanding measures of variability
- Statistical hypothesis testing
- Differences between descriptive and inferential statistics
During the beginning of the civilization era, simple forms of statistics have been to existence. Such simple forms of statistics can be located through ancient pictorial representations and other symbols which were used to record the numbers of animals, people, sticks of wood, slabs and the walls of caves. Before 3000 BC, there was relatively positive progress in statistics where the Babylonians could use small clay tablets to record tabulations of the commodities sold or bartered not forgetting the number of agriculture yields harvested. The Egyptians were also not left behind with the development of statistics. They used to analyze the material wealth and the population of their country before commencing on building their pyramids.
The biblical books of Numbers and 1 Chronicles are simply the works of statistics with the former highlighting the two separate counting or census of the people of Israel while the later clearly describes the amount of material wealth of the Jewish tribes. Similar records can also be traced back before 2000BC in China and the ancient Greeks where censuses were held for taxation purposes.
The Roman Empire
During the middle Ages, the Roman Empire was the most powerful. It was also the first government at that time to do extensive data gathering on the area, wealth and population of the territories that were under their control. During that time in Europe, Charlemagne and Carolingians Kings Pepin in 762 and 758 respectively ordered surveys to be done on ecclesiastical holdings. In 1066, on account of Norman Conquest of England, the King of England by then, William I, also ordered the census to be conducted. All the information gathered concerning the census was recorded in a book entitled "DOMESDAY."
John Graunt: Bills of Mortality
In 1662, a year many scholars pinpoint as the year of origin of statistics, John Graunt published natural and political observations based on the bills of Mortality. The publication called for the need of states to use statistics to base their policies concerning economic and demographic data. This saw the extensive employment of statistics in government and businesses till to date.
Blaise Pascal and Pierre de Fermat
The mathematical foundations of statistics were laid during the 17th century with the Probability theory which was developed by Blaise Pascal and Pierre de Fermat. This Probability theory arose after a lengthy study by Blaise Pascal on the games of chance. This brought the methods of least squares which were described by Carl Friedrich Gauss in 1794.
Thomas Simpson: The Theory of Errors
Although the theory of errors can be traced back to 1722, it is only through a memoir which was prepared by Thomas Simpson in 1755, that first saw the application of the theory on discussion of errors of observation. This memoir by Thomas Simpson lays down the axioms on the equal probability of positive and negative errors through a probability curve.
Pierre-Simon Laplace and Daniel Bernoulli
In 1774, Pierre-Simon Laplace attempted to deduce a rule that combined observations and the theory of probability principles. He represented this law of probability of errors using a curve, where, he deduced a mean of three observations. In 1778, Daniel Bernoulli introduced the principle of maxima of a system with concurrent errors.
Modern Statistics
Today, the use of statistics has been reliable in describing the values of social, political, biological and economic data appropriately. It has also served well as a tool when correlating and analyzing data. Moreover, today Statistics is considered as a distinct mathematical science rather than mathematics branch due to its focus on applications and empirical roots.
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