The Rise of Statistical Thinking, 1820-1900

By T. Porter. 2020

870 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This book explores the history of statistics from the field's origins in the nineteenth century through to the factors that produced the burst of modern statistical innovation in the early twentieth century. The book shows that statistics was not developed by mathematicians and then applied to the sciences and social sciences. Rather, the field came into being through the efforts of social scientists, who saw a need for statistical tools in their examination of society. Pioneering statistical physicists and biologists James Clerk Maxwell, Ludwig Boltzmann, and Francis Galton introduced statistical models to the sciences by pointing to analogies between their disciplines and the social sciences. A new preface looks at how the book has remained relevant since its initial publication, and considers the current place of statistics in scientific research.

Subfields: History and Philosophy of Science, Statistics and Probability

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/dbd021a2ef5a345e169b16688c3b150dc9fa81c4

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In History and Philosophy of Science

In Statistics and Probability

Citations in the corpus

Narrative and the Cultural Psychology of Identity (2008, background): “…been recognized as the primary unit of analysis in the discipline of psychology (e.g., Allport, 1962), the gradual ascendance of aggregate statistical methods has rendered most information generated by psychological research entirely nomothetic (see Lamiell, 1981, 1987, 1998, 2003; Porter, 1986).”
Data Analysis as the Search for Signals in Noisy Processes. (2002, background): “Recent histories of the development of statistics (Hacking, 1990; Porter, 1986; Stigler, 1986) portray the early innovators of statistics as struggling from the beginning with issues of interpretation.”
How should we do the history of Big Data? (2016, background): “In this sense, it could be argued that we already have a history of Big Data that can be found in accounts of the history of the use of statistics to know and govern populations (see for example Desrosières, 1998; Foucault, 2007; Hacking 1990; MacKenzie, 1981; Porter, 1986, 1995; Elden, 2007).”
The Science of Conjecture: Evidence and Probability Before Pascal (2002, background): “There are a number of books (e.g., Hald 1998; Porter 1986; Stigler 1986) devoted to the history of statistics.”
When did Bayesian inference become "Bayesian"? (2006, background): “See Porter (127, Chapter 1).”
Narrative, psychology and the politics of sexual identity in the United States: from ‘sickness’ to ‘species’ to ‘subject’ (2013, methodology): “With the rise of statistical thinking in psychological research emerged an approach to data that relied upon aggregation (Danziger, 1990; Porter, 1986).”
Space, politics, calculation: an introduction (2006, background): “Such claims for a politics of calculation have been pursued in the work of Ian Hacking ( 1975 , 2002 ) and Theodore Porter ( 1986 ) but without the critical relations between space and calculation being elucidated.”
Milestones in the history of thematic cartography, statistica l graphics, and data visualization (2008, background): “By the 16th century, techniques and instruments forprecise observation and measurement of physical quantities were well-developed— the beginnings of the husbandry of visualization.”
The challenge of developing statistical literacy, reasoning and thinking (2004, background): “Graunt and these other political arithmeticians, besides calculating insurance rates—which involved much discussion among them on producing realistic mortality tables—were also promoting the notion that state policy should be informed by the use of data rather than by the authority of church and nob”
Toward Information Infrastructure Studies: Ways of Knowing in a Networked Environment (2009, background): “climatology, and other increasingly powerful techniques for monitoring population composition and health (Porter, 1986).”
“Geography of Opportunity”: Poverty, Place, and Educational Outcomes (2008, background): “Similarly, the rise of statistical thinking in the social sciences is associated with doing research on or for citizens out of concern for protecting their lives (Porter, 1986).”
The Sources of Kolmogorov’s Grundbegriffe (2006, background): “In the nineteenth century, British interest in probability had been practical and philosophical, not mathematical (Porter, 1986, page 74ff).”
Understanding Infrastructure: Dynamics, Tensions, and Design (2007, background): “Statistics etymologically refers to “state-istics,” or the quantitative study of societies (states); it arose along with censuses, medical records, climatology, and other increasingly powerful techniques for monitoring population composition and health (Porter 1986).”
Tracking the numbers: Across accounting and finance, organizations and markets (2009, background): “…e.g. Mennicken & Vollmer, 2007) to include not only different forms of economic calculation, but also forms of statistical reasoning (e.g. Desrosières, 2002; Hacking, 1984; Porter, 1986; MacKenzie 1978), mathematical (Heintz, 2003; MacKenzie, 1999) and everyday (Lave 1988) calculative practices.”
Critical Data Studies: A dialog on data and space (2016, methodology): “As with Big Data analytics today, the transition from moral to exact science involved flattening the data subject into an anonymous and average person (Porter, 1986: 25).”
TOWARDS AN UNDERSTANDING OF STATISTICAL THINKING (2004, background): “According to Porter (1986, p. 319) the evolvement of statistical thinking from 1662 to 1900 “has been not just to bring out UNDERSTANDING OF STATISTICAL THINKING 25”
A Brief History of Data Visualization (2008, background): “There are many historical accounts of developments within the fields of probability (Hald, 1990), statistics (Pearson, 1978, Porter, 1986, Stigler, 1986), astronomy (Riddell, 1980), cartography (Wallis and Robinson, 1987), which relate to, inter alia, some of the important developments contributing…”