#OTD 1 Apr 1895 Alexander Craig "Alec" Aitken b (d 3 Nov 1967) Introduced generalised least squares & the now-standard vector-matrix notation for linear regression models 1935. With Harold Silverstone he established the lower bound on the variance of an estimator, now known as Cramér–Rao bound. 1/6🧵

William J Youden d #OTD 1971 (b 12 Apr 1900) ASA Fellow 1951; RSS Fellow 1965; ASA Wilks Award 1969. Developer of novel experimental designs & analysis methods & communicating them to non-statistician researchers, his J statistic is still used for capturing diagnostic test performance.

Your annual reminder that there would be no Rothamsted or DOE without Jethro Tull baptized #OTD 1674 (d 21 Feb 1741). He was heavily criticised in his lifetime for his revolutionary rejection of the poetry of Virgil as scientific authority for agricultural methods in favour of actual experiments

OTD 1983 Sir Maurice Kendall d (b 6 Sep 1907) ASA Fellow 1950; Guy Silver & Gold Medals, RSS President 1961. Known for Kendall's tau, rank correlation coefficient; k-statistic; less well known is that in 1939 he & Babington-Smith built the first random number generating machine

Ethel Newbold d #OTD 1933 (b 28 Aug 1882) RSS Fellow 1921 & first woman awarded Guy Medal 1928. An epidemiologist with the Medical Research Council & Cambridge Wrangler, in 2014 the Bernoulli Society established the Newbold Prize in her honor for excellence in mathematical statistics research.

Karl Pearson b #OTD 1857 (d April 27 1936) Founder of biometrics, & developer of mathematical statistical theory with many classical statistical methods still in use. In 1911 he launched the world's first university statistics department at UCL

Happy🎂 William G Hunter b #OTD 1937 (d 29 Dec 1986) ASA Fellow 1979. Founder ASQC Statistics division & brilliant teacher of design of experiments, co-author of THE classic ‘Statistics for Experimenters’. George Box called him “an innovator and catalyst for quality improvement”

Margaret K. Butler b #otd 1924 (d 8 Mar 2013) Statistician at the Bureau of Labor Statistics she changed course to be a computer pioneer (one of the developers of ORACLE & UNIVAC). First woman American Nuclear Society Fellow, she led Argonne National Lab Applied Mathematics Division

In March 1903, the Worshipful Company of Drapers granted £1,000 to UCL “to assist the statistical work and higher teaching of the Department of Applied Mathematics”. Karl Pearson used it to buy release time, create a new statistics research group, & publish his now-famous series on regression

Frederick C Mills b #OTD 1892 (d 9 Feb 1964) ASA Fellow 1926; President ASA 1934, & American Economic Association 1940. Researcher for the NEBR on business cycles & macroeconomics.

Pierre-Simon Marquis de Laplace b # OTD 1749 (d 5 Mar 1827) One of the greatest scientists of all time, his prodigious mathematical talent alienated many of his contemporaries, mostly because he told them he was the best mathematician in France, which he was.

Walter F Willcox b #OTD 1861 (d 30 Oct 1964). President ASA 1912, American Economic Association 1915 & ISI 1947. In 1892 he started the first statistics course at Cornell, one of the earliest in the US. Founder U.S. Census Bureau Statistical Research Office

Happy 🎂Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier b #OTD 1768 (d 16 May 1830). He presented his Fourier series in a paper to the Paris Institute 21 Dec 1807. The series was repurposed by Colley and Tukey in 1965 as the fast Fourier transform, revolutionising digital computing 1/4

Happy 🎂Norman Draper b #OTD 1931 (d 19 Jun 2022) ASA Fellow 1971; Fellow ISI, RSS; Shewhart Medal 2005. Known for his book Applied Regression Analysis, & a "prime mover" in the development of robust DOE, empirical model building & response surface methodology for quality engineering

Edgar Sydenstricker d #OTD 1936 (b 15 Jul 1881) ASA Fellow 1922. An overlooked pioneer of health economics & income-related health inequalities he was the first statistician for the US Public Health Service 1915 & co-developer of US National Health Survey. His sister was the novelist Pearl S Buck

Happy 🎂 Walter A Shewhart b 18 Mar 1891 (d 11 Mar 1967) ASA Fellow 1934, ASA President 1945. Developed the control chart 1924 which marked the beginning of statistical quality control. His key insight was that time series visualization of industrial processes is the secret to system control

Before high-speed computers, numerical tables were all-important. Laplace recognized the need for tabulated values of the normal probability integral about 1783. The mathematician Chrétien (or Christian) Kramp constructed the first table in 1799 & tabulated its logarithms to 7 decimal places.

Happy 🎂 Royal Statistical Society founded #OTD 1834. Charles Babbage, Thomas Malthus, Adolph Quetelet & Richard Jones thought it time to escape from the British Association for the Advancement of Science. The Statistical Society of London became the Royal Statistical Society by royal charter in 1887

During WW2 Abraham Wald developed the sequential probability ratio test for military quality control. He was given the problem in March 1943 & developed the test by April. Because of its importance the paper was classified until the end of the war.

Donald Marquardt (ASA Fellow 1975; ASA President 1986) b #OTD 1929 (d 5 Jul 1997). Known for the Levenberg-Marquardt method of nonlinear estimation. His algorithm was developed with an IBM Card Programmed Calculator. 1/

The first of the two French Royal Commissions (referred to as the "Franklin Commission" because Benjamin Franklin was a member) was appointed 12 March 1784 to investigate mesmerism. They conducted the first blinded systematic controlled trial. 🧵

Happy 🎂Warren Milton Persons b #OTD 1878 (d 11 Oct 1937) Inaugural ASA Fellow 1914, 18th ASA President 1923. Pioneered statistical methods for the forecasting of business cycles but he also finds time to write 'Beer and Brewing in America; An Economic Study' published posthumously in 1938.

Churchill Eisenhart b #OTD 1913 (d 27 Jun 1994) ASA Fellow 1943; ASA President 1971. Chief, Statistical Engineering Laboratory, National Bureau of Standard, he made major contributions to research on statistical methods such as ANOVA & applications in agriculture, national defense, & engineering

#OTD 1622 Johan Heinrich Rahn b (d 27 May 1676). Credited for introducing the asterisk for multiplication *, the obelus ÷ for division and possibly the product symbol ∏ in his 1659 book Teutsche Algebra. However.... 1/2

Described as an 'epochal' publication #OTD(?) 1774 Pierre-Simon de Laplace publishes 'Mémoire sur la probabilité des causes par les événemens' [Memoir on the Probability of the Causes of Events] formally introducing the concept of inverse probability, the foundation for Bayesian statistics

Esther Seiden b #OTD 1908 (d 3 Jun 2014) IMS and ISI Fellow for her work on combinatorial theory, repeated measurement design with treatment additivity, & design of experiments. Her PhD dissertation under Jerzy Neyman was on problems of confounding in factorial designs.

📖Upcoming! HOS-SIG BOOK CLUB📖 featuring Stephen Stigler WHEN: 6 April 2026 at 3:30 PM EST BOOK: Casanova's Lottery Professor Stigler will discuss the book and will be available to answer questions. To register go to community.amstat.org/historyofsta...

Remembering Bertha C. Boschulte on #InternationalWomensDay b #OTD 1906 (d 18 Aug 2004) Statistician, educator, women's rights activist, politician. Director of St Thomas Department of Health. Elected Senator of the Virgin Island Legislature 1964

Happy #InternationalWomensDay remembering the first 4 women elected ASA Fellows: Kate Claghorn 1918; Aryness Joy Wickens 1938; Helen Walker 1940; Dorothy Swaine Thomas 1942

#OTD 1964 Samuel S. Wilks d (b 17 June 1906). ASA Fellow 1940, ASA President 1950. The “Statesman of Statistics”, ukelele player, & editor with Walter Shewhart of the John Wiley ‘Series in Statistics' establishing a solid statistical literature by 1964

#OTD 1805 Adrien-Marie Legendre introduces the first clear statement of least squares [“Sur la Méthode des moindres quarrés”] in an appendix to his 1805 book on cometary motion. However Gauss claimed he had developed it in 1795 when he was 18. Who scooped who has been hotly disputed ever since.

#OTD 1574 William Oughtred b (d 30 Jun 1660) Inventor of the log-based slide rule, we also have him to thank for common math symbols still used today, x for multiplication, : for proportions, & abbreviations "sin" & "cos". What didn’t catch on is a vertical line | instead of . for decimals.

Benjamin Gompertz b #OTD 1779 (d 14 Jul 1865) FRS, self-taught mathematician & founder member of the Royal Statistical Society 1834. Although originally developed for actuarial purposes, his Gompertz curve is most often used for modelling vertebrate age-specific growth & mortality

Eleanor Josephine Macdonald b #OTD 1906 (d 26 Jul 2007). Pioneering cancer epidemiologist who established the first cancer registry in US. One of the earliest proponents of concept of cancer as preventable disease & early adopter of computer technology to cancer research

#OTD 1897 Mary Eleanor Spear b (d 22 Jan 1986) Bureau of Labor Statistics data visualization specialist, she pioneered the box plot (usually credited to Tukey). In the days before computer graphics, she was an influential communicator of techniques & presentations for effective statistical graphics

#OTD 1861 John Koren b (d 9 Nov 1923) Inaugural ASA Fellow 1914,9th ASA President 1914. Statistician with the Bureau of Labor & US Census he worked to standardize statistics of crime & criminal law. For ASA's 75th anniversary he produced an influential book on the history of official statistics.

Alfred J Lotka b #OTD 1880 (d 5 Dec 1949) ASA Fellow 1926, ASA President 1942; Fellow IMS. Statistician at Metropolitan Life Insurance, he is best known for his work on population dynamics & the Lotka–Volterra predator-prey model of paired first-order nonlinear differential equations

March 1922 marks the official launch of the newly renamed ‘Journal of the American Statistical Association’. The original name ‘Quarterly Publication of the American Statistical Association’ was too long. The vote at the 83rd Annual meeting nearly went to 'American Statistical Review'.

#OTD 1859 Florian Cajori b (d 14 Aug 1930) cofounder & president Mathematical Association of America and VP AAAS, he promoted the study of the history of mathematics as an academic discipline. Colorado College awards the Cajori Prize for outstanding achievement in mathematics.

#OTD 1662 John Graunt is elected to the Royal Society based on his bestseller (yes it was) 'Natural and Political Observations Made Upon The Bills Of Mortality'. His work was an unprecedented advance in epidemiological thinking. 1/x🧵

In Feb 1934, Alan Turing (1912-1954) an undergraduate at King’s College Cambridge, completed a rigorous mathematical proof of the central limit theorem for independent random variables. 1/3 🧵

#OTD 1920 K C Sreedharan Pillai b (d 05 Jun 1985) ASA Fellow 1969, Fellow IMS & ISI; UN statistician. We know him for Pillai’s trace test statistic for MANOVA and MANCOVA. The first Pillai Memorial lecture at Purdue was given by CR Rao

Happy 🎂 Richard Price b #OTD 1723 (d 19 Apr 1791) Best known for popularizing the essays of Thomas Bayes, the basis of what is now called Bayes's Theorem. Price’s contributions were more substantial than he has been credited with. 1/4🧵

#OTD 1873 Royal Meeker b (d 16 Aug 1953) ASA Fellow 1916, 1913 Commissioner of Labor Statistics 1920, Chief Scientific Division, International Labor Office of the League of Nations. Advocated progressive reforms, incl national health insurance, child labor restrictions, workmen’s compensation.

Happy 🎂Adolphe Quetelet! b #OTD 1796 (d 17 Feb 1874) Cofounder of the Royal Statistical Society & pioneer in the application of probability to social science, giving us the Average Man & unhappily the Body Mass Index. 1/3🧵

Since 1179, the Trial of the Pyx (one of the oldest quality assurance trials in the world) has occurred every year about this time at the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths, London. The process checks that newly minted coins conform to required specifications.

#OTD 1924 Evelyn Chrystalla (EC) Pielou b (d 16 Jul 2016) one of the most influential ecologists of the 20th cent for foundational work in statistical ecology. ESA Eminent Ecologist Award 1986, Distinguished Statistical Ecologist Award International Congress of Ecology 1990, Fellow AAAS.

#OTD 1919 Dorothy Morrow Gilford b (d 6 Dec 2014). ASA Fellow 1961; IMS Fellow, Honorary RSS Fellow; AAAS Fellow 1962. Head Mathematical Sciences Division, Office of Naval Research Awarded Federal Women's Award 1965 by Pres Lyndon Johnson, 2nd statistician after Aryness Joy Wickens to receive it.

Happy 🎂George Udny Yule b #OTD 1871 (d 26 Jun 1951) Guy Gold medal 1911. RSS President 1924-6. Best known for influential papers on time-series analysis (his paper on sunspot numbers is a classic), regression, association, & genetics. 1/4🧵

Happy 🎂Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher b #OTD 1890 (d 29 Jul 1962). A revolutionary genius described by Bradley Efron as “the single most important figure in 20th century statistics” he made lasting contributions to both theoretical & applied statistics.