Quantitative Methods - Quiz 1: Stats. History

Statistics (mathematical branch)

Deals with collecting, analyzing and sharing data.

Quantitative Statistics

Structured, empirical techniques used to collect and analyze numerical data (ex: pie chart, bargraph).

History of Statisitics

• Mesopotamia: ancient Greek for “ btw rivers”

• Dates: ca 3500 to 539 BCE

• located in present day Syria, southeastern Turkey and Iraq

• Early cradle of civilization and fertile land because of the rivers that it sits on.

• Early evidence of stats. 3400 to 3200 BCE.

Cuneiform Tablets

• clay tablets accidentally destruction of Sumerian settlement

• The tablets contain info on: trade (delivery, reception, expenditures and purchase of goods.

• Salaries ( offering and payment of services

Early Statistics

• Began in Ancient Eygpt

• located in N. Africa ( 3100 - 30 BCE)

• divided: old, middle, New Kingdom and Ptolemaic Dynasty

• Kingdom begins with unification of Upper and Lower Eygpt and ends with annexation of Rome ( period of high tension)

Rosetta Stone

• allowed archeologists to get records on the quantity of resources (land, live stock, workers) and water levels of the Nile

  • began btw 3000 to 2700 BCE

  • Records written in hieroglyphics, hieratic, demotic and coptic

Palermo Stone

• Holds Eygptien history

• fragment of stello

• small hierolgryphics

• Holds records of rain of Eygptian pharohs and Nile floods

Early Counting to Probability

• Change occured in Europe btw the 17th c. and 18th c.

• The question of info shifted to: what can numerical data tell us about an uncertain world ?

• Probability theory can be attributed to Blaise Pascal and Pierre de Fermat

Blaise Pascal ( 1623 - 1662)

• French mathematicien, phyciscist, philosopher

• Involved the study of gambling predictability

• BY determining the odds of players winning, he arranged # into a triangular shape. ( Pascal’s triangle)

• Using the triangle, it was possible to calculate the odds of a player winning at any odds.

Pierre de Fermat ( 1601 - 1665)

• French magistrate, polymath, mathematician

• contributed to # theory and calculus, which later influenced the development of quantum theory

• He proved how to calculate expected values instead past scores.

Statistical Enlightenment

• 19th and 20th c. met with significant advancements

• Gov.s, scientists and mathematicians collected an increasing amount of information.

• Incidentally, the developed method for analyzing variation, uncertainty, and relationships btw variables.

• Stats. increasingly more used in biology, social sciences, agriculture.

Statistics Today

• Now a fundamental tool for comprehending data and making decision under uncertainty.

• The development of computers led to mass # of datasets that can be analyzed using stat. softwares like R-Studi, excel, SPSS.

• Collecting and organizing data, identify patterns.

Statistics in Canada

• Canada’s first statistician = Jean Talon

• In 1666, initiated the first official consensus of New France, counted 3125 settlers (excluding natives)

• In 1867, the responsibility to gather data was given to the federal gov.