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HandWiki. History of Statistics. Encyclopedia. Available online: https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/30197 (accessed on 24 September 2026).
HandWiki. History of Statistics. Encyclopedia. Available at: https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/30197. Accessed September 24, 2026.
HandWiki. "History of Statistics" Encyclopedia, https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/30197 (accessed September 24, 2026).
HandWiki. (2022, October 19). History of Statistics. In Encyclopedia. https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/30197
HandWiki. "History of Statistics." Encyclopedia. Web. 19 October, 2022.
History of Statistics
Edit

The history of statistics in the modern way is that it originates from the term statistics, found in 1749 in Germany. Although there have been changes to the interpretation of the word over time. The development of statistics is intimately connected on the one hand with the development of sovereign states, particularly European states following the peace of Westphalia (1648); and the other hand with the development of probability theory, which put statistics on a firm theoretical basis (see history of probability). In early times, the meaning was restricted to information about states, particularly demographics such as population. This was later extended to include all collections of information of all types, and later still it was extended to include the analysis and interpretation of such data. In modern terms, "statistics" means both sets of collected information, as in national accounts and temperature records, and analytical work which requires statistical inference. Statistical activities are often associated with models expressed using probabilities, hence the connection with probability theory. The large requirements of data processing have made statistics a key application of computing; see history of computing hardware. A number of statistical concepts have an important impact on a wide range of sciences. These include the design of experiments and approaches to statistical inference such as Bayesian inference, each of which can be considered to have their own sequence in the development of the ideas underlying modern statistics.

history of computing statistical inference data processing

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