#OTD 1883 Frances Wood b (d 12 Oct 1919) Her pioneering research included theoretical statistics, education, medicine, & labour statistics. Made RSS fellow in 1913 she was 1st F member of RSS Council (1915) and the Executive Committee (1917). Appointed OBE in 1918 for her statistical work 1/2

#OTD 24 Dec 1916 Frederick Mosteller b (d 23 Jul 2006) ASA Fellow 1949, ASA President 1967. Founder Harvard Dept of Statistics. One of the most eminent statisticians of the 20th century, he also taught the first statistics MOOC on educational TV 1960-1 (viewed by 1.2 million!) 1/2

#OTD 1763 Richard Price (1723-1791) reads ‘An Essay towards solving a Problem in the Doctrine of Chances' to the Royal Society. It is the basis of what is now called Bayes's Theorem, written by his friend Thomas Bayes who had died 2 years before.

#OTD 1880 William Cope Brinton b (d 29 Nov 1957) ASA Fellow 1922. Pioneer of modern data visualization methods. He chaired the first meeting of the Joint Committee on Standards for Graphic Presentation with ASA & 15 other professional societies in Dec 1914 1/3

#OTD 21 Dec 1835 Col Sir John Sinclair d (b 10 May 1754) He first introduces the words ‘statistics’ and ‘statistical’ in English in his 1791 21-volume ‘Statistical Account of Scotland’. He apologizes for using anglicized forms of the German word "Statistik" rather than a ‘real’ English word. 1/4

#OTD 1888 Francis Galton reads a paper to the Royal Society on the ‘co-relation’ of two variables. By 1890 he had reverted to the spelling ‘correlation’ used by physicists. Karl Pearson continued its development - Galton’s index of co-relation r is now called Pearson’s r

Margaret Merrell (3 Dec 1900 – 21 Dec 1995) ASA Fellow 1951, AAAS fellow. 1st woman full professor at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. Internationally recognized as the best teacher of biomedical statistics “bar none” & b/c she carried most of the JHSPH teaching load... 1/2

#OTD 1894 Karl Pearson submits the first of a series of papers on ‘his’ family of continuous probability distributions for skewed observations. He identified 4 types characterized by their 3rd & 4th standardized moments: 1/2

Martin B Wilk “The best statistician in Canada's history" b #OTD 1922 (d 19 Feb 2013) Chief Statistician of Canada 1980-5, ASA Fellow 1962, ASA VP 1980-2; President Statistical Society of Canada. With Samuel Shapiro developed the Shapiro–Wilk test & Q–Q & P–P plots with Ram Gnanadesikan

#OTD 1931, the Indian Statistical Institute was founded in Calcutta (now Kolkata). It began in the Statistical Laboratory set up by PC Mahalanobis in the early 1920s. Until the ISI was founded, he did nearly all the statistical work for India by himself.

Seventy-five years ago, in Dec 1950 James Durbin and Geoff S. Watson introduced their eponymous test for serial correlation in least squares regression. In a 1988 interview Durbin said the bounds test concept came together in about 3 weeks & the mathematical details over a few months. 1/2

Also #OTD Happy 🎂to Wilfred J Dixon (15 Dec 1915 - 20 Sep 2008) ASA Fellow 1955, RSS Fellow, IMS Fellow, ASA Wilks Medal 1992. Pioneer in health statistics & health informatics, & developer of BMDP Statistical Software in 1961, one of the first general statistical software packages

OTD 1731 Francis Maseres b (d 19 May 1824) My favourite statistics popularizer of all time (move over Tim Harford!). He published at his own expense the earliest English translations of major works by Napier, Snellius, James Gregory, Huygens, Halley & Bernoulli 1/4

#OTD 2016 Steven Fienberg d (b 27 Nov 1942) ASA Fellow 1972, IMS Fellow; COPSS Award 1982, 2015; ISBA Zellner Medal 2016 ASA Samuel S Wilks Award. The “ultimate public statistician” he brought statistics to science and public policy. 1/3

OTD 1877 Edward CD Molina b (d 19 Apr 1964) ASA Fellow 1945 A forgotten pioneer of statistical engineering & self-taught mathematician, he championed application of advanced probability methods to telecommunication R&D. 1/3

In Dec 1931 William Sealey Gosset (‘Student’) publishes a detailed statistical critique of Leighton & McKinlay’s 1930 Lanarkshire Milk Experiment. His comments still apply to problems seen today with both observational studies & clinical trials. 1/4🧵

#OTD 11 Dec 1923 Janet L. Norwood b (d 27 Mar 2015) ASA Fellow 1974, ASA President 1989 (6th woman); VP ISI; Honorary RSS Fellow. “Democracy’s Statistician”, she is best known as 1st F US Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner 1979-1991. 1/3

Happy 210th🎂to Ada King Countess of Lovelace, b 1815 (d Nov 27 1852) Best known for her work on Charles Babbage's ‘Analytical Engine’. Her ‘Note G’ for calculating a sequence of Bernoulli numbers with loops and branching is recognised as the first computer program. 1/3 🧵

#OTD 1895 Lancelot Hogben b (d 22 Aug 1975) FRS Medical statistician & experimental biologist. Inventor of the N-of-1 clinical trial. He argued forcefully against the ‘tyranny of averages’, eugenics (& RA Fisher) & warned about dangers of poor statistical inference

#OTD 1917 Thomas C Chalmers b (d Dec 20 1995) Pioneer in the application of randomized controlled trials & meta-analysis for evaluating therapeutics in medical research, & integrating patient informed consent in RCT conduct

#OTD 1943 the ASA Detroit Chapter adopts a strongly worded resolution protesting the omission of statisticians from the Michigan War Manpower Commission list of critical wartime occupations. It makes the front page of the Detroit News with the headline "Statisticians Cut a Critical Figure"

#OTD 1899 G Udny Yule (1871-1951) introduces a method for determining the ‘association of attributes’ to "distinguish it from the 'correlation' of continuous variables". Attributes include ‘artistic faculty’, temper in fraternities & 'dulness’. I don’t make this stuff up you know.

On 5 Dec 2020 David Christie computed the constant e to approx π x 1013 digits with a 2x Intel Xeon E5-2680 v2 processor (2.8 GHz 252 GB). It took 54 d to compute and 46 d to verify. e first appeared in print in 1727-8 in a paper by the 21-year old Leonhard Euler.

In Dec 1923 William S Gosset under the pseudonym ‘Student’ publishes the first modern-looking ANOVA table. It is a footnote in a 22-pg paper on grain varieties. He credits RA Fisher for correcting some mistakes in the initial variance calculations in the original formulation.

#OTD 2 Dec 1921 Otis Dudley Duncan b (d 16 Nov 2004) ASA Fellow 1961;"the most influential sociologist of the 20th century.” He made sociology quantitative & rigorous by introducing advanced statistical tools (path analysis, log-linear & Rasch models, spatial analysis)

On 1 Dec 1891 Helen Walker b (d 15 Jan 1983) ASA Fellow 1940, 1st woman elected ASA President 1944, President Am Educational Research Association 1949. Best known for education research & history of statistics & statistical method.

#OTD 1807 William Farr b (d 14 Apr 1883) FRS 1855, President London Statistical Society (now RSS). Best known as collaborator with Florence Nightingale he was one of the founders of medical statistics, pioneering quantitative studies of morbidity & mortality

Martha (Marti) S. Hearron d #OTD 2014 (b 4 Apr 1943) ASA fellow 1988 Renowned biostatistician for Upjohn, she cofounded & was later 1st woman to chair the ASA Biopharmaceutical Section. She also established the first scholarship program & endowed professorship for U Michigan College of Fine Arts

John Wishart b #OTD 1898 (d 14 Jul 1956) ASA Fellow 1950, best known for his work at Rothamsted with Ronald Fisher, later first Director of the Cambridge Statistical Laboratory 1953. He developed the generalised product-moment distribution named after him in 1928

Sedley Antony Cudmore b #OTD 1878 Chief of General Statistics at the Dominion Bureau of Statistics, editor of the Canada Yearbook 1920-35, and Canada’s second Dominion Statistician 1942-5

Happy🎂to the American Statistical Association organized #OTD 1839 to "collect, preserve, and diffuse statistical information in the different departments of human knowledge" The 1st President was Richard Fletcher. The society began publishing its journal in 1888

In 1687 William Hunt, a beer and liquor exciseman, and self-described ‘Student in the Mathematiks’ & “True Friend to All that are Mathematically Affected” describes his method for obtaining a mean of sorts with his geometric method for ‘inching’ brewers’ tuns

In November 1987 Microsoft launches Excel for Windows. The launch for Macintosh was Sept 30 1985.

#OTD 1922 Claus A Moser b (d 4 Sep 2015) (Baron Moser) KCB CBE, ASA Fellow 1965. Professor Social Statistics at LSE, & Director of the Central Statistical Office. A WWII refugee he became interested in social statistics during his internment as an 'enemy alien'

Happy🎂to the American Statistical Association organized #OTD 1839 to "collect, preserve, and diffuse statistical information in the different departments of human knowledge" The 1st President was Richard Fletcher. The society began publishing its journal in 1888

#OTD 1917 Elizabeth L. Scott b (d 20 Dec 1988) IMS Fellow. Best known for application of statistical methods to problems in astronomy, meteorology & status of women in academia. In 1992 COPSS established the Elizabeth Scott Award for individuals who “foster opportunities in statistics for women”.

#OTD 1857 Katharine Coman b (d 11 Jan 1915). Professor at Wellesley College & noted historian, economist, sociologist, & social activist, she was the first woman to teach statistics in the US. Wellesley was the only American women's college to offer statistics courses before 1900.

We think of the concept of random allocation as relatively modern, first attributed to Charles Sanders Peirce 1883 & later by Ronald Fisher for agricultural trials 1920s & Austin Bradford Hill for clinical trials 1946. However, they were scooped by the King of Lydia 2000 years earlier 1/2

Stuart A Rice b #OTD 1889 d 4 June 1969 (ASA Fellow 1933, 28th ASA president 1933) Assistant Director of both the Census Bureau 1933 & Statistical Standards in the Budget Bureau, one of the developers of the UN Statistical Office and first chair of the UN Statistical Commission.

#OTD 1896 Winifred A Mackenzie b (d 29 Nov 1954) 1st winner of RSS Frances Wood Memorial Prize. Studied economic statistics with Arthur Bowley. Best known for her work at Rothamsted, including the first systematic description of ANOVA 1923 co-authored with RA Fisher.

Leonard (Jimmie) Savage b #OTD 1917 (d 1 Nov 1971) Guggenheim fellow 1951 President IMS 1957. Founder & Chair Chicago Statistics Dept. Best known for work on subjective probability & expected utility theory. ASA & IMS sponsored his memorial volume in 1981 1/3

#OTD 1891, Karl Pearson gives his Gresham lecture on "The Geometry of Statistics" in which he presents graphs showing distributions of deaths & discusses actuarial methods, variation, & chance. He later expands on these ideas in his 1897 book The Chances of Death

Happy belated 🎂 to David L Sackett (17 Nov 1934-13 May 2015) FRSC OC. With Archie Cochrane, father of modern clinical epidemiology and evidence-based medicine (which he explicitly defined in 1996). 1/2

Between 17 Nov 1891 & 11 May 1894 Karl Pearson gives 38 Gresham College lectures on statistics, free to the public. The lectures resulted in his first 2 published statistical papers, were the basis of his statistical theories, & led to the creation of his Biometric School. 1/🧵

István Hatvani d #OTD 1786 (b 21 Nov 1718). First Hungarian to apply the law of large numbers to mortality statistics he studied with Johann & Daniel Bernouilli, was an early proponent of probability theory 1757 & advocated quantitative methods when philosophical deductive methods predominated

In Nov 1904 Karl Pearson introduces the first clinical meta-analysis evaluating effectiveness of typhoid inoculations for British soldiers. He gives a pooled estimate of effect & comments on the ‘significance’ of correlations between inoculation, escape, & recovery.

#OTD 1716 Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz d (b 1 Jul 1646) Although he is best known for his work on differential & integral calculus, & the binary system of arithmetic, he also invented an early calculating machine (‘stepped reckoner’) c 1672. 1/2

Joseph L Fleiss b #OTD 1937 (d 12 Jun 2003) ASA Fellow 1973, President ENAR 1986. Best known for work on intraclass correlation & rater agreement, his 1974 paper showed that different psychiatric providers were rarely in agreement when using DSM-II to diagnose patients with similar problems

Happy 🎂 to the normal curve! #OTD 1733 Abraham de Moivre published a description in Latin. It had the catchy title Approximatio ad Summam Terminorum Binomii (a + b)n in Seriem expansi [Approximation of the Sum of the Terms of the Binomial (a + b)n expanded into a Series] 1/2

#OTD 1918 the Armistice was signed, ending the fighting in WWI. Casualties among French mathematicians were enormous as they were not a protected category, unlike in Germany & Britain. Among them was Major André-Louis Cholesky 1/2