05 / Historic Timeline

When statistics actually happened.

Introduction Part One · astronomy & geodesy Part Two · the social sciences Part Three · heredity a published work — hover any dot or bar for detail

← Scroll the chart sideways to reach 1950 →

1650

1700

1750

1800

1850

1900

1950

BritainLondon · Woolwich · Oxford · Cambridge · Tunbridge Wells · Greenwich

John Graunt · London

1662 Bills of Mortality

Francis Galton · London

1869

1877

1885

1888

Francis Ysidro Edgeworth · London · Oxford

1885

1892

John Arbuthnot · London

1710 Sex ratio at birth

Karl Pearson · London

1895

1896

1900

Abraham de Moivre · London

1718

1733

Udny Yule · London · Cambridge

1899 Pauperism

Thomas Bayes · Tunbridge Wells

1763 Essay on Chances

Thomas Simpson · Woolwich

1755 The mean beats one

FranceParis · Lyon

Pierre-Simon Laplace · Paris

1774 Probability of causes

1810

1812

Adrien-Marie Legendre · Paris

1805 Least squares

Siméon Denis Poisson · Paris

1837 Jugements

Antoine Augustin Cournot · Paris · Lyon

1843 Exposition

German landsBerlin · Nuremberg · Göttingen · Königsberg · Leipzig · Freiburg

Leonhard Euler · Berlin

1749 Jupiter & Saturn

Hermann Ebbinghaus · Berlin

1885 Über das Gedächtnis

Tobias Mayer · Nuremberg · Göttingen

1750 Libration of the Moon

Carl Friedrich Gauss · Göttingen

1809 Theoria Motus

Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel · Königsberg

1823 Personal equation

Gustav Fechner · Leipzig

1860 Psychophysik

Wilhelm Lexis · Freiburg · Göttingen

1877 Dispersion

Low CountriesThe Hague · Brussels

Baron de Keverberg · The Hague

1827 The de Keverberg dilemma

Adolphe Quetelet · Brussels

1835

1846

Switzerland & ItalyBasel · Rome

Jacob Bernoulli · Basel

1713 Ars Conjectandi

Roger Joseph Boscovich · Rome

1757 Minimising absolute deviations

RussiaSt Petersburg · Berlin

Ladislaus von Bortkiewicz · St Petersburg · Berlin

1898 Law of small numbers

The ledger

Thirty-five works and moments, in the order they happened. The last column is where to start reading in the book.

Year	What happened	Who	Where	In Stigler
1662	Bills of MortalityNatural and Political Observations Made upon the Bills of Mortality — an early attempt to read the Parish Clerks' weekly bills — christenings as well as burials — as a population	John Graunt	London	Introduction
1710	Sex ratio at birthAn Argument for Divine Providence, Taken from the Constant Regularity Observ'd in the Births of Both Sexes	John Arbuthnot	London	Ch. 6
1713	Ars ConjectandiArs Conjectandi, published eight years after his death — the law of large numbers, with a bound too weak to use	Jacob Bernoulli	Basel	Ch. 2
1718	Doctrine of ChancesThe Doctrine of Chances — the first original English treatise on probability	Abraham de Moivre	London	Ch. 2
1733	Normal approximationApproximatio ad summam terminorum binomii — the bell curve arrives as an approximation to the binomial, not yet as a law of error	Abraham de Moivre	London	Ch. 2
1749	Jupiter & SaturnPrize essay on the inequalities of Jupiter and Saturn — and a refusal to combine discordant equations	Leonhard Euler	Berlin	Ch. 1
1750	Libration of the MoonTwenty-seven equations in three groups of nine — the method of averages. Published in the Kosmographische Nachrichten while Mayer was at the Homann bureau; the Göttingen chair came the following year	Tobias Mayer	Nuremberg	Ch. 1
1755	The mean beats oneOn the Advantage of Taking the Mean of a Number of Observations, in practical Astronomy — errors, not just outcomes, get a distribution	Thomas Simpson	Woolwich	Ch. 2
1757	Minimising absolute deviationsMeridian arcs fitted by minimising absolute deviations subject to the residuals summing to zero, stated in the 1757 Bologna memoir. The survey ran 1750–52; the celebrated De Litteraria Expeditione, with Christopher Maire, is its Rome 1755 account	Roger Joseph Boscovich	Rome	Ch. 1
1763	Essay on ChancesAn Essay towards Solving a Problem in the Doctrine of Chances — published posthumously by Richard Price, more than two years after Bayes's death; Stigler's bibliography dates it 1764	Thomas Bayes	Tunbridge Wells	Ch. 3
1774	Probability of causesMémoire sur la probabilité des causes par les événements — inverse probability	Pierre-Simon Laplace	Paris	Ch. 3
1805	Least squaresNouvelles méthodes pour la détermination des orbites des comètes — least squares published as a rule, with no probability behind it	Adrien-Marie Legendre	Paris	Ch. 1
1809	Theoria MotusTheoria Motus Corporum Coelestium — the normal curve derived by assuming the mean is the right answer	Carl Friedrich Gauss	Göttingen	Ch. 4
1810	Central limit theoremThe central limit theorem, presented to the First Class of the Institut de France — aggregation makes the normal curve	Pierre-Simon Laplace	Paris	Ch. 3
1812	Théorie analytiqueThéorie analytique des probabilités — and, in 1811, the probabilistic justification of least squares	Pierre-Simon Laplace	Paris	Ch. 4
1823	Personal equationBessel measures astronomers against each other — the observer becomes part of the instrument	Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel	Königsberg	Ch. 7
1827	The de Keverberg dilemmaKarel Lodewijk van Keverberg van Kessel — Governor of Antwerp, then East Flanders, then a member of the Council of State — argues that Quetelet's sample census cannot be scaled up unless the population is homogeneous	Baron de Keverberg	The Hague	Ch. 5
1835	L'homme moyenSur l'homme et le développement de ses facultés, ou Essai de physique sociale — the average man	Adolphe Quetelet	Brussels	Ch. 5
1837	JugementsRecherches sur la probabilité des jugements — the law of large numbers taken into the courtroom	Siméon Denis Poisson	Paris	Ch. 5
1843	ExpositionExposition de la théorie des chances et des probabilités — a stable rate, he warned, explains nothing by itself. Written as Inspector General of Public Instruction in Paris; the Lyon chair was a decade behind him	Antoine Augustin Cournot	Paris	Ch. 5
1846	Fitting the curveLettres sur la théorie des probabilités — Scottish soldiers' chests and French conscripts fitted to the normal curve; Stigler corrects Quetelet's chest table against the 1817 original at p. 208	Adolphe Quetelet	Brussels	Ch. 5
1860	PsychophysikElemente der Psychophysik — the method of right and wrong cases	Gustav Fechner	Leipzig	Ch. 7
1869	Hereditary GeniusHereditary Genius — the statistical scale applied to human ability	Francis Galton	London	Ch. 8
1877	DispersionZur Theorie der Massenerscheinungen in der menschlichen Gesellschaft — do social series vary more than binomial trials should? Issued as his Freiburg Programm; Göttingen came much later	Wilhelm Lexis	Freiburg	Ch. 6
1877	Quincunx & sweet peasTypical Laws of Heredity — the quincunx, the sweet-pea experiment, and reversion	Francis Galton	London	Ch. 8
1885	Methods of StatisticsMethods of Statistics — Edgeworth's statistical programme in summary, while Lecturer in Logic at King's College London	Francis Ysidro Edgeworth	London	Ch. 9
1885	Über das GedächtnisÜber das Gedächtnis — nonsense syllables, and a man measuring his own forgetting	Hermann Ebbinghaus	Berlin	Ch. 7
1886	Regression in statureRegression towards Mediocrity in Hereditary Stature — the parent–child table and the ellipse. Reporting the data behind his 1885 presidential address to Section H at Aberdeen; printed in 1886, which is also Stigler's date for it	Francis Galton	London	Ch. 8
1888	Co-relationsCo-relations and their Measurement, Chiefly from Anthropometric Data	Francis Galton	London	Ch. 8
1892	Correlated AveragesCorrelated Averages — Galton's correlation given its mathematics, from the Drummond chair at Oxford	Francis Ysidro Edgeworth	Oxford	Ch. 9
1895	Skew curvesContributions to the Mathematical Theory of Evolution II — the Pearson family of skew curves	Karl Pearson	London	Ch. 10
1896	Product-moment rRegression, Heredity and Panmixia — correlation becomes the coefficient we still use	Karl Pearson	London	Ch. 10
1898	Law of small numbersDas Gesetz der kleinen Zahlen — rare events, and the soldiers killed by horse kicks in fourteen Prussian army corps. Printed by Teubner in Leipzig while Bortkiewicz was in St Petersburg with the Railway Pension Committee; he had held a Strasbourg Privatdozentur until 1897, and reached Berlin only in 1901	Ladislaus von Bortkiewicz	St Petersburg	Ch. 6
1899	PauperismAn Investigation into the Causes of Changes in Pauperism in England, Chiefly During the Last Two Intercensal Decades (Part I.) — multiple regression on administrative data, written just after he left University College London for the City and Guilds Institute; the Cambridge lectureship came in 1912	Udny Yule	London	Ch. 10
1900	Chi-squareOn the Criterion... — the chi-square goodness-of-fit test, and Stigler's closing date	Karl Pearson	London	Ch. 10