Question

Discuss the progression of statistics and probability from ancient times to modern times including a discussion of the uses of statistics and probability prior to the foundations in the 16^th and 17^th centuries.

Answer 1

In early times, the meaning of statistics was restricted to information about states, particularly demographics such as population. This was later extended to include all collections of information of all types, and later still it was extended to include the analysis and interpretation of such data.

Probability has its origin in the study of gambling and insurance in the 17th century, and it is now an indispensable tool of both social and natural sciences. Statistics may be said to have its origin in census counts taken thousands of years ago; as a distinct scientific discipline, however, it was developed in the early 19th century as the study of populations, economies, and moral actions and later in that century as the mathematical tool for analyzing such numbers.

The English clergyman Joseph Butler, in his very influential Analogy of Religion (1736), called probability “the very guide of life.” The phrase, however, did not refer to mathematical calculation but merely to the judgments made where rational demonstration is impossible. The word probability was used in relation to the mathematics of chance in 1662 in the Logic of Port-Royal, written by Pascal’s fellow Jansenists, Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole. But from medieval times to the 18th century and even into the 19th, a probable belief was most often merely one that seemed plausible, came on good authority, or was worthy of approval. Probability, in this sense, was emphasized in England and France from the late 17th century as an answer to skepticism. Man may not be able to attain perfect knowledge but can know enough to make decisions about the problems of daily life. The new experimental natural philosophy of the later 17th century was associated with this more modest ambition, one that did not insist on logical proof.

Development over time :

During the 19th century, statistics grew up as the empirical science of the state and gained preeminence as a form of social knowledge. Population and economic numbers had been collected, though often not in a systematic way, since ancient times and in many countries. In Europe the late 17th century was an important time also for quantitative studies of disease, population, and wealth. In 1662 the English statistician John Graunt published a celebrated collection of numbers and observations pertaining to mortality in London, using records that had been collected to chart the advance and decline of the plague. In the 1680s the English political economist and statistician William Petty published a series of essays on a new science of “political arithmetic,” which combined statistical records with bold—some thought fanciful—calculations, such as, for example, of the monetary value of all those living in Ireland. These studies accelerated in the 18th century and were increasingly supported by state activity. The search for a widely acceptable definition took nearly three centuries and was marked by much controversy.

Finally in the 20th century by treating probability theory on an axiomatic basis. In 1933 a monograph by a Russian mathematician A. Kolmogorov outlined an axiomatic approach that forms the basis for the modern theory. Since then the ideas have been refined somewhat and probability theory is now part of a more general discipline known as measure theory."

Uses of statistics and probability before 16th century :

8th century - Forms of probability and statistics were developed by Al-Khalil, an Arab mathematician studying cryptology. He wrote the Book of Cryptographic Messages which contains the first use of permutations and combinations to list all possible Arabic words with and without vowels.[1]

9th century - Al-Kindi was the first to use statistics to decipher encrypted messages and developed the first code breaking algorithm in the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, based on frequency analysis.

1560s– There was attempts to calculate probabilities of dice throws by demonstrating the efficacy of defining odds as the ratio of favourable to unfavourable outcomes (which implies that the probability of an event is given by the ratio of favourable outcomes to the total number of possible outcomes)