Development of Statistics

Before 1600

• 1560s(published 1663) - Cardano'sLiber de ludo aleae attempts to calculate probabilities of dice throws
• 1577- Bartolomé_de_Medina defends Catholic_probabilism, the view that in ethics one may follow a probable opinion even if the opposite is more probable

17th century

• 1654- Blaise_Pascaland Pierre_de_Fermatcreate the mathematical theory of Probability,
• 1657- Christiaan_Huygens'sDe ratiociniis in ludo aleae is the first book on mathematical probability,
• 1662- John_Graunt'sNatural and Political Observations Made upon the Bills of Mortality makes inferences from statistical data on deaths in London,
• 1693- Edmund_Halleyprepares the first Mortality_tablestatistically relating Death Rate to age

18th century

• 1710- John_Arbuthnotargues that the constancy of the ratio of male to female births is a sign of divine providence,
• 1713- Posthumous publication of Jacob_Bernoulli'sArs_Conjectandi, containing the first derivation of a Law_of_large_numbers,
• 1724- Abraham_de_Moivrestudies mortality statistics and the foundation of the theory of http://wiki.answers.com/w/index.php?title=Annuitie&action=edit&redlink=1in Annuities on Lives,
• 1733- Abraham de Moivre introduces the Normal_distributionto approximate the Binomial_distributionin probability,
• 1739- David_Hume'sTreatise_of_Human_Natureargues that Inductive_reasoningis unjustified,
• 1761- Thomas_Bayesproves Bayes'_theorem,
• 1786- William_Playfair'sCommercial and Political Atlas introduces Line_chartand Bar_chartof data,

19th century

• 1801- Gausspredicts the orbit of Ceresusing a line of best fit
• 1805- Adrien-Marie_Legendreintroduces the Method_of_least_squaresfor fitting a curve to a given set of observations,
• 1814- Laplace'sEssai philosophique sur les probabilités defends a definition of probabilities in terms of equally possible cases, introduces Generating_functionand Laplace_transform, uses Conjugate_priorfor Exponential_families, proves an early version of the Bernstein von-Mises theorem on the asymptotic irrelevance of prior distributions on the limiting posterior distribution and the role of the Fisher_informationon asymptotically normal posterior modes.
• 1835- Adolphe_Quetelet'sTreatise on Man introduces social science statistics and the concept of the "average man",
• 1866- John_Venn'sLogic of Chance defends the Frequentistof probability.
• 1883- Charles_Sanders_Peirceoutlines Frequentist_statistics, emphasizing the use of objective Randomizationin Randomized_experimentand in Sampling_(statistics). Peirce also invented an Optimal_designfor Response_surface_methodology.
• 1880- Thorvald_N._Thielegives a mathematical analysis of Brownian_motion, introduces the Likelihood_function, and invents Cumulant.
• 1888- Galtonintroduces the concept of Correlation

20th century

• 1900- Louis_Bachelieranalyzes Stock_pricemovements as a Stochastic_process,
• 1908- Student's_t-distributionfor the mean of small samples published in English (following earlier derivations in German).
• 1921- Keynes' Treatise on Probability defends a logical interpretation of probability,
• 1928- Leonard_Henry_Caleb_Tippettand Ronald_Fisher'sintroduce Extreme_value_theory,
• 1933- Andrey_Nikolaevich_Kolmogorovpublishes his book Basic notions of the calculus of probability (Grundbegriffe der Wahrscheinlichkeitsrechnung) which contains an Probability_axiombased on Measure_theory,
• 1935- Ronald_Fisher'sDesign of Experiments (1st ed),
• 1937- Jerzy_Neymanintroduces the concept of Confidence_intervalin statistical testing,
• 1946- Cox's_theoremderives the axioms of probability from simple logical assumptions,
• 1948- Claude_Shannon'sMathematical_Theory_of_Communicationdefines capacity of communication channels in terms of probabilities,
• 1953- Nicholas_Metropolisintroduces the idea of thermodynamic Simulated_annealingmethods

21st Century

• 2003- E.T._Jaynes'sProbability Theory: The Logic of Science defends probability theory as a comprehensive method of evaluation of evidence
• 2009- David_X._Li'sCopulaformula blamed as one cause of the Late_2000s_recession