''The Lady Tasting Tea: How Statistics Revolutionized Science in the Twentieth Century'' () is a book by

David Salsburg David S. Salsburg (born 1931) is an American author. His 2002 book ''The Lady Tasting Tea'', subtitled ''How Statistics Revolutionized Science in the Twentieth Century'', provides a layman's overview of important developments in the field of statis ...

about the history of modern

statistics Statistics (from German language, German: ', "description of a State (polity), state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data. In applying statistics to a s ...

and the role it played in the development of science and industry. The title comes from the "

lady tasting tea In the design of experiments in statistics, the lady tasting tea is a randomized experiment devised by Ronald Fisher and reported in his book '' The Design of Experiments'' (1935). The experiment is the original exposition of Fisher's notion of ...

", an example from the famous book, ''

The Design of Experiments ''The Design of Experiments'' is a 1935 book by the English statistician Ronald Fisher about the design of experiments and is considered a foundational work in experimental design. Among other contributions, the book introduced the concept of th ...

'', by

Ronald A. Fisher Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher (17 February 1890 – 29 July 1962) was a British polymath who was active as a mathematician, statistician, biologist, geneticist, and academic. For his work in statistics, he has been described as "a genius who a ...

. Regarding Fisher's example, the statistician

Debabrata Basu Debabrata Basu (5 July 1924 – 24 March 2001) was an Indian statistician who made fundamental contributions to the foundations of statistics. Basu invented simple examples that displayed some difficulties of likelihood-based statistics an ...

wrote that "the famous case of the '

'" was "one of the two supporting pillars ..of the randomization analysis of experimental data".

Summary

The book discusses the statistical revolution which took place in the twentieth century, where science shifted from a deterministic view (

Clockwork universe The clockwork universe is a concept which compares the universe to a mechanical clock. It continues ticking along, as a perfect machine, with its gears governed by the laws of physics, making every aspect of the machine predictable. It evolved d ...

) to a perspective concerned primarily with probabilities and distributions and parameters. Salsburg does this through a collection of stories about the people who were fundamental in the change, starting with men like R.A. Fisher and

Karl Pearson Karl Pearson (; born Carl Pearson; 27 March 1857 – 27 April 1936) was an English biostatistician and mathematician. He has been credited with establishing the discipline of mathematical statistics. He founded the world's first university ...

. He discusses at length how many of these people had their own

philosophy of statistics The philosophy of statistics is the study of the mathematical, conceptual, and philosophical foundations and analyses of statistics and statistical inference. For example, Dennis Lindely argues for the more general analysis of statistics as the s ...

, and in particular their own understanding of

statistical significance In statistical hypothesis testing, a result has statistical significance when a result at least as "extreme" would be very infrequent if the null hypothesis were true. More precisely, a study's defined significance level, denoted by \alpha, is the ...

. Throughout, he introduces in a very nontechnical fashion a variety of statistical ideas and methods, such as

maximum likelihood estimation In statistics, maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) is a method of estimation theory, estimating the Statistical parameter, parameters of an assumed probability distribution, given some observed data. This is achieved by Mathematical optimization, ...

and

bootstrapping In general, bootstrapping usually refers to a self-starting process that is supposed to continue or grow without external input. Many analytical techniques are often called bootstrap methods in reference to their self-starting or self-supporting ...

Reception

The book was generally well-received, receiving coverage in a variety of medical and statistical journals. Reviewers from the medical field enjoyed Salsburg's coverage of Fisher's opposition to early research on the

health effects of tobacco Tobacco products, especially when smoked or used orally, have serious negative effects on human health. Smoking and smokeless tobacco use are the single greatest causes of preventable death globally. Half of tobacco users die from complications ...

. Critics disagreed with certain opinions that Salsburg voiced, like his barebones portrayal of

Bayesian statistics Bayesian statistics ( or ) is a theory in the field of statistics based on the Bayesian interpretation of probability, where probability expresses a ''degree of belief'' in an event. The degree of belief may be based on prior knowledge about ...

and his seeming disdain for

pure mathematics Pure mathematics is the study of mathematical concepts independently of any application outside mathematics. These concepts may originate in real-world concerns, and the results obtained may later turn out to be useful for practical applications ...

. Nevertheless, almost all reviewers appreciated the interesting read and recommended the book to people in their field as well as a general audience.

List of scholars mentioned

The book discusses a wide variety of statisticians, mathematicians, as well as other scientists and scholars. This is a list of those mentioned, broken down into groups of chapters.

Chapters 1-9

Chapters 10-19

Chapters 20-29

References

External links

Publisher's web page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lady Tasting Tea 2002 non-fiction books Statistics books History of probability and statistics Henry Holt and Company books