An introduction to the history of modern statistics presented in an
interesting manner.

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lady_Tasting_Tea


        Russell

____________________________________

They say they say:

  At a summer tea party in Cambridge, England, a lady states that tea
poured into milk tastes differently than that of milk poured into tea.
Her notion is shouted down by the scientific minds of the group. But
one guest, by the name Ronald Aylmer Fisher, proposes to
scientifically test the lady's hypothesis. There was no better person
to conduct such a test, for Fisher had brought to the field of
statistics an emphasis on controlling the methods for obtaining data
and the importance of interpretation. He knew that how the data was
gathered and applied was as important as the data themselves.

  In The Lady Tasting Tea, readers will encounter not only R.A.
Fisher's theories (and their repercussions), but the ideas of dozens
of men and women whose revolutionary work affects our everyday lives.
Salsburg traces the rise and fall of Karl Pearson's theories, explores
W. Edwards Deming's statistical methods of quality control (which
rebuilt postwar Japan's economy), and relates the story of Stella
Cunliffe's early work on the capacity of small beer casks at the
Guinness brewing factory. The Lady Tasting Tea is not a book of dry
facts and figures, but the history of great individuals who dared to
look at the world in a new way.

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