The rise of statistical thinking, 1820-1900 / Theodore M. Porter ; with a new preface by the author.

• Machine generated contents note: pt. ONE THE SOCIAL CALCULUS -- ch. 1 Statistics as Social Science -- The Politics of Political Arithmetic -- The Numbers of a Dynamic Society -- ch. 2 The Laws That Govern Chaos -- Quetelet and the Numerical Regularities of Society -- Liberal Politics and Statistical Laws -- ch. 3 From Nature's Urn to the Insurance Office -- pt. TWO THE SUPREME LAW OF UNREASON -- ch. 4 The Errors of Art and Nature -- Quetelet: Error and Variation -- ch. 5 Social Law and Natural Science -- Molecules and Social Physics -- Galton and the Reality of Variation -- pt. THREE THE SCIENCE OF UNCERTAINTY -- ch. 6 Statistical Law and Human Freedom -- The Opponents of Statistics -- Statistics and Free Will -- The Science of Diversity -- Statistik: Between Nature and History -- ch. 7 Time's Arrow and Statistical Uncertainty in Physics and Philosophy -- Buckle's Laws and Maxwell's Demon -- Boltzmann, Statistics, and Irreversibility -- Peirce's Rejection of Necessity -- pt. FOUR POLYMATHY AND DISCIPLINE -- ch. 8 The Mathematics of Statistics -- Lexis's Index of Dispersion -- Edgeworth: Mathematics and Economics -- ch. 9 The Roots of Biometrical Statistics -- Galton's Biometrical Analogies -- Regression and Correlation -- Pearson and Mathematical Biometry.

• 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. Theodore Porter 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 by the author looks at the enduring relevance and significance of the book since its initial publication, and considers the current place of statistics in scientific research. 

Ämnesord

Matematisk statistik  -- historia -- 19th century. (LCSH)

Mathematical statistics.  (fast)

1800-1899  (fast)

Genre

History.  (fast)

Klassifikation

QA276.15 (LCC)

519.509034 (DDC)

Thi (kssb/8 (machine generated))