Statistical Revolution in the 20th Century

David Salsburg (2001), The Lady Tasting Tea. Henry Holt Paperbacks, New York, pp. 340

This book is a tour de force of the statistical revolution in the twentieth century that transformed science from a deterministic branch of inquiry into something more probabilistic as we know it today. In the introductory chapter, Salsburg paints a picture of nineteenth century science that introduced a ‘clock-work’ universe in which a small number of mathematical laws were used to describe reality and predict future events using a set of formulas and their associated measurements. This ‘god-less universe’ was a fundamental disruption from the earlier conceptions of creationism and shook popular culture into understanding and accepting its temperament. Gradually, into this new universe, ‘error functions’ were introduced when reality deviated from the predicted models or when human mistakes crept in. The addition of error function and probabilistic thinking about the world around us was the major contribution of ‘statistical’ thinking in science that later led to major developments including the development of computers on the one hand, and public policy tools such as census on the other.

Lives and Works of Statisticians

This book tells the story of how statistics transformed the philosophical foundations of science in the last century, through the lives and works of major statisticians. On the criterion of selecting the scholars described in the book, Salsburg confesses that he chose major contributors of mathematical statistics who are accessible non-mathematically to a lay audience. In 29 chapters, the author has given a bird’s-eye view of pioneers such as Galton, Pearson, Fisher, Gosset and Neyman, sympathetic portrayal of extraordinary lives of geniuses and polymaths in the likes of Kolmogorov and Tukey and unearthed the stories of quiet but significant contributions of Samuel Wilks, Isidore Good and FN David. An entire chapter deals with the contribution of women statisticians in addition to their stewardship that comes through many chapters throughout the book.

The book builds up anticipation through its riveting narrative of the most well-known figures in history. We begin in Galton’s laboratory and see him at work in regression and skew distribution followed by Karl Pearson as he expands and sets up great institutions such as Biometrika and an entire school of philosophical thought. Then, enter Gosset and his ‘student’s T-test’ till the imitable Fisher comes in to break old orthodoxies and liberate many strands of inquiry. The gentle giant Neyman and the extra-ordinary foresight of Kolmogorov, especially his philosophical questions, are dealt with sensitivity and understanding. One thing I found missing was a last chapter that could have shown the way ahead in terms of exciting new work done by young scholars and the directions that the discipline in taking in the 21^st century.

The book is at once a collection of brief biographical sketches of statisticians, broad-brush history of institutions and a short reference guide to important academic work in modern statistics. Written with sympathy and erudition, Salsburg’s work is a warm introduction to both the science-history buff as well as to anyone about to embark on a serious academic journey in statistics.

A Study in Statistics

Stephen Jay Gould (1996). The Mismeasure of Man. Penguin London, pp. 446

‘Art is limitation. The essence of every picture is the frame’.

G.K. Chesterton

Stephen Gould is a rare species in the literary world- a scientist with a flair for essay-writing! Through his monthly column in the Natural History magazine, Gould crossed disciplinary boundaries from evolutionary theory to science history and used diverse tools such as statistics and common sense to drive home his arguments. To a student of biology, he is known for his punctuated equilibrium theory among other things and to the philosopher, for his argument that science and religion were two distinct domains with non-overlapping authorities. It is to the non-specialist, that Gould was at his delightful best, exposing the dangers of applying faulty logic and ‘evidence’ from science to justify social projects of domination and discrimination.

Ranking Intelligence

In this book, Gould examines one specific form of quantifying claim about ranking human beings as an illustration of the larger malady. He discusses the belief that intelligence can be meaningfully abstracted as a single number and graded in a linear scale to denote the intrinsic and unalterable worth of a person. He examines this question from three vantage points- that of the philosophical error of the assumption, social impact of its implementation and the epistemological underpinning of ‘nature versus nurture’ that it evokes.

Characteristic to his method, he goes about dismantling this argument by systematically tracing its historical antecedents. He revisits each scholar as he sets about his experiments and draws his inferences, walking with them through their intellectual journey and exposing where the fault-lines of their logic lay.  He takes us back to the time of feverishly measuring cranium and bodies of corpses in the hope of measuring intelligence and later, tinkering with genes and environment with the faith that the truth about our abilities can be abstracted and distilled in a meaningful way. He demonstrates how even the best intended scholars can be blinded to their own fallacies in methods and measurement and how our implicit beliefs often colour our inferences. By doing this exercise with exacting rigour and immense patience, he shows us how, women, people of colour and people with differential abilities come out on their own, liberated from the burden of historical accusations of intellectual inferiority that was unfair, untruthful and dangerous.

This book is a study in history as much as it is in statistics. The parts of the book where Gould marshals evidence from research methodology (especially on factor analysis) is so lucid that I cannot but recommend it to students beginning their research work using statistical methods. I believe that the greatest contribution of the book is the perspective it gives us regarding what scientific enquiry is all about. Like the message in Chesterton’s quote in the beginning of this essay, science like art, is limited by its frame of reference. It is in acknowledging the limits of enquiry that we can hope to be truthful about our inference.