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Title: The Lady Tasting Tea: How Statistics Revolutionized Science in the Twentieth Century by David Salsburg ISBN: 0-8050-7134-2 Publisher: Owl Books Pub. Date: 01 May, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.15 (20 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Good reading - but might be lacking an appropriate audience
Comment: I am pleased that someone in the area of statistics has followed the example of those authors who have attempted to outline the history - and to some extent the philosophy - of math (Eric Bell) and physics (Timothy Ferris). While statistical methods form the basis for so many areas of cutting-edge research today, when it comes to the general public, statistics is probably one of the most unappreciated sciences (read: lies, damned lies, and statistics). Additionally, those in the statistical sciences (I'm a graduate student in statistics) many times overlook the development and hence the philosophy and thinking behind many of the methods they use. Unfortunately, statistical methods are thus sometimes put to use by someone who is intent on using a tool without considering the implications or liabilities of using that tool.
Hence, the topic and motivation of this book are needed. But I wonder whether the book has an appropriate audience, especially one outside of the statistical sciences. As I read through the book, I had to wonder whether I would have understood a single thing had I not had the background in statistics. True, the author avoids use of mathematical formulas. But telling the reader that so and so developed goodness of fit and that so and so developed maximum likelihood is not going to be very helpful if that reader doesn't know conceptually what these things are. To be fair, the author does go into more detail than that, but I still wondered whether the general public would get any of it.
As a statistician, I did enjoy reading the book and I obtained a good amount of cohesive information that would have been very difficult to find elsewhere. My only complaint about the book is that it was not more mathematically or philosophically rigorous.
But then I don't think such a book can provide both rigor to one audience and ease to another. I'm just not quite sure which audience the book was intended for.
Rating: 5
Summary: great look at statistics in the 20th Century
Comment: The Lady Tasting Tea is a new book by David Salsburg (a Ph.D. mathematical statistician, who recently retired from Pfizer Pharmaceuticals in Connecticut). The title of the book is taken from the famous example that R. A. Fisher used in his book "The Design of Experiments" to express the ideas and principles of statistical design to answer research questions. The subtitle "How Statistics Revolutionized Science in the Twentieth Century" really tells what the book is about. The author relates the statistical developments of the 20th Century through descriptions of the famous statisticians and the problems they studied.
The author conveys this from the perspective of a statistician with good theoretical training and much experience in academia and industry. He is a fellow of the American Statistical Association and a retired Senior Research Fellow from Pfizer has published three technical books and over 50 journal articles and has taught statistics at various universities including the Harvard School of Public Health, the University of Connecticut and the University of Pennsylvania.
This book is written in layman's terms and is intended for scientists and medical researchers as well as for statistician who are interested in the history of statistics. It just was published in early 2001. On the back-cover there are glowing words of praise from the epidemiologist Alvan Feinstein and from statisticians Barbara Bailar and Brad Efron. After reading their comments I decided to buy it and I found it difficult to put down.
Salsburg has met and interacted with many of the statisticians in the book and provides an interesting perspective and discussion of most of the important topics including those that head the agenda of the computer age and the 21st century. He discusses the life and work of many famous statisticians including Francis Galton, Karl Pearson, Egon Pearson, Jerzy Neyman, Abraham Wald, John Tukey, E. J. G. Pitman, Ed Deming, R. A. Fisher, George Box, David Cox, Gertrude Cox, Emil Gumbel, L. H. C. Tippett, Stella Cunliffe, Florence Nightingale David, William Sealy Gosset, Frank Wilcoxon, I. J. Good, Harold Hotelling, Morris Hansen, William Cochran, Persi Diaconis, Brad Efron, Paul Levy, Jerry Cornfield, Samuel Wilks, Andrei Kolmogorov, Guido Castelnuovo, Francesco Cantelli and Chester Bliss. Many other probabilists and statisticians are also mentioned including David Blackwell, Joseph Berkson, Herman Chernoff, Stephen Fienberg, William Madow, Nathan Mantel, Odd Aalen, Fred Mosteller, Jimmie Savage, Evelyn Fix, William Feller, Bruno deFinetti, Richard Savage, Erich Lehmann (first name mispelled), Corrado Gini, G. U. Yule, Manny Parzen, Walter Shewhart, Stephen Stigler, Nancy Mann, S. N. Roy, C. R. Rao, P. C. Mahalanobis, N. V. Smirnov, Jaroslav Hajek and Don Rubin among others.
The final chapter "The Idol with Feet of Clay" is philosophical in nature but deals with the important fact that in spite of the widespread and valuable use of the statistical methodology that was primarily created in the past century, the foundations of statistical inference and probability are still on shaky ground.
I think there is a lot of important information in this book that relates to pharmaceutical trials, including the important discussion of intention to treat, the role of epidemiology (especially retrospective case-control studies and observational studies), use of martingale methods in survival analysis, exploratory data analysis, p-values, Bayesian models, non-parametric methods, bootstrap, hypothesis tests and confidence intervals. This relates very much to my current work but the topics discussed touch all areas of science including, engineering in aerospace and manufacturing, agricultural studies, general medical research, astronomy, physics, chemistry, government (Department of Labor, Department of Commerce, Department of Energy etc.), educational testing, marketing and economics. I think this is a great book for MDs, medical researchers and clinicians too! It will be a good book to read for anyone involved in scientific endeavors. As a statistician I find a great deal of value in reviewing the key ideas and philosophy of the great statisticians of the 20th Century.
I also have gained new insight from Salsburg. He has given these topics a great deal of thought and has written eloquently about them. I have learned about some people that I knew nothing about like Stella Cunliffe and Guido Castelnuovo. It is also touching for me to hear about the work of my Stanford teachers, Persi Diaconis and Brad Efron and other statisticians that I have met or found influential. These personalities and many other lesser-known statisticians have influenced the field of statistics.
The book includes a timeline that provides a list in chronological order of important events and the associated personalities in the history of statistics. It starts with the birth of Karl Pearson in 1857 and ends with the death of John Tukey in 2000.
Salsburg also provides a nice bibliography that starts with an annotated section on books and papers accessible to readers who may not have strong mathematical training. The rest of the bibliography is subdivided as follows: (1) Collected works of prominent statisticians, (2)obituaries, reminiscences, and published conversations and (3) other books and article that were mentioned in this book.
The book provides interesting reading for both statisticians and non-statisticians.
Rating: 5
Summary: Pleasing intro to statisctics for lay(wo)men
Comment: An intriguing story based introduction to the fast field of
statistics. No formulas but still plenty of math terms explained
as easily as possible. The life stories of many statisticians
are combinded with the history of certain statistical problems.
This book showed me how huge the field of stastics is.
Statistics and Probability seem now to be scientific issues
on not just ways for politicians to cheat the public. In
everyday life, any mention of a statistic result causes at best
a compasionate smile. But this book changed that for me and I'd
like to learn more about this topic.
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Title: The History of Statistics: The Measurement of Uncertainty Before 1900 by Stephen M. Stigler ISBN: 067440341X Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr Pub. Date: March, 1990 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Statistics on the Table : The History of Statistical Concepts and Methods by Stephen M. Stigler ISBN: 0674009797 Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr Pub. Date: 30 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: An Introduction to Probability and Inductive Logic by Ian Hacking ISBN: 0521775019 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 02 July, 2001 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: Games, Gods & Gambling : A History of Probability and Statistical Ideas by F. N. David ISBN: 0486400239 Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: 18 February, 1998 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: How to Lie With Statistics by Darrell Huff, Irving Geis ISBN: 0393310728 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: November, 1993 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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