Statistics and probability

Van der Waals' equation of state.
Yes, I know: nothing really goes here.

I like the word stochastic better, because of its lineage in our language. The first root was stegh, meaning a pointed stake in the Indo-European of 30,000 years ago. Stegh moved into Greek as stokhos, meaning a target for archers, and then later on, in our language, targets being what they are and aiming arrows being as fallible as it is, stokhos was adapted to signify aiming and missing, pure chance, randomness, and thus stochastic. On that philological basis, then, I’m glad to accept all of evolution in a swoop, but I’m still puzzled by it.

— Lewis Thomas, (1913 – 1993), The Fragile Species, Collier Macmillan, 1992, 5.

 

The Reader may here observe the Force of Numbers, which can be successfully applied, even to those things, which one would imagine are subject to no Rules. There are very few things which we know, which are not capable of being reduc’d to a Mathematical Reasoning; and when they cannot it’s a sign our knowledge of them is very small and confus’d; and when a Mathematical Reasoning can be had it’s as great a folly to make use of any other, as to grope for a thing in the dark, when you have a Candle standing by you.
— John Arbuthnot (1667 – 1735), Of the Laws of Chance. (1692).

 

I know of scarcely anything so apt to impress the imagination as the wonderful form of cosmic order expressed by the “Law of Frequency of Error.” The law would have been personified by the Greeks and deified, if they had known of it. It reigns with serenity and in complete self-effacement, amidst the wildest confusion. The huger the mob, and the greater the apparent anarchy, the more perfect is its sway. It is the supreme law of Unreason. Whenever a large sample of chaotic elements are taken in hand and marshaled in the order of their magnitude, an unsuspected and most beautiful form of regularity proves to have been latent all along.
— Francis Galton (1822 – 1911), in J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956. 1482.

 

To call in the statistician after the experiment is done may be no more than asking him to perform a postmortem examination: he may be able to say what the experiment died of.
— Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher (1890 – 1962) Indian Statistical Congress, Sankhya, ca 1938.

 

Ah, but my Computations, People say,
Reduced the Year to better reckoning? — Nay
‘Twas only striking from the Calendar
Unborn To-morrow, and dead Yesterday.
— Edward Fitzgerald, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam .

 

It is not denied that a large part of the British force perished from causes not the unavoidable or necessary results of war … (10,053 men, or sixty percent per annum, perished in seven months, from disease alone, upon an average strength of 28,939. This mortality exceeds that of the Great Plague) … The question arises, must what has here occurred occur again?

No tribunal has ever tried this question. It hardly seems to have occurred to the national mind …

Immediately after the troops went to the East the practical inefficiency of the Army Medical Department began to show itself.

It would, indeed, be difficult to frame a system of administration more likely to lose an army at any time than this. Here is the first downward step of our noble Army to destruction.
— Florence Nightingale, Report on the Crimea, 1858.

 

Her statistics were more than a study, they were indeed her religion. For her Quetelet was the hero as scientist, and the presentation copy of his Physique sociale is annotated by her on every page. Florence Nightingale believed — and in all the actions of her life acted upon that belief — that the administrator could only be successful if he were guided by statistical knowledge. The legislator — to say nothing of the politician — too often failed for want of this knowledge. Nay, she went further; she held that the universe — including human communities — was evolving in accordance with a divine plan; that it was man’s business to endeavour to understand this plan and guide his actions in sympathy with it. But to understand God’s thoughts, she held we must study statistics, for these are the measure of His purpose. Thus the study of statistics was for her a religious duty.

— Karl Pearson The Life, Letters and Labours of Francis Galton, vol. 2, 1924.

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