The Lady Tasting Tea: How Statistics Revolutionized Science in the Twentieth Century

I teach introductory engineering statistics at a Midwestern university--I've been looking for a book that could give me a little background about the personalities and history behind the sometimes dry theories I present in class. This book has all that--and more.Dr. Salsburg is a born story-teller--he grabs you right with the introductory story, about a woman's purported ability to taste tea. What a nice juxtaposition of some of the best scientific and mathematical minds in the world, ganging up to deduce what one woman knows intuitively! All this is a wonderful introduction to the science behind statistics--much of which has evolved in modern times.Galton's investigations of tall fathers' and their sons' "regression to the mean" led him to discover correlation coefficients. Galton's disciple, Karl Pearson, realized that experiments don't provide one clean number, but rather a scatter of values--this led him to develop seminal ideas involving "distributions." The four parameters that completely describe a member of the Pearson System are the mean, standard deviation, symmetry, and kurtosis. Pearson's rival, the brilliant Ronald Fisher, was to realize that we can only estimate those four parameters--we can never truly determine them from the data. The curmudgeony Pearson and equally gruff Fisher found a mediator in the brilliant, wonderfully friendly "dear Mr. Gosset," a gifted statistician for the Guinness Brewing Company who was compelled to slip around company policies against publishing scientific results in order to let us know about the "Student"'s T-Test. And on Dr. Salsburg goes. Who knew (I certainly didn't) that hypothesis testing was originally looked at askance? Or that statistic's Mozart, Andrei Nikolaevich Kolmogorov, was the son of "parents not formally married," whose mother died in childbirth alone in a strange town far from her relatives. That Kolmogorov, with his brilliant ability to see geometric relationships, conceived of finding the probability of an event as being something akin to finding the shape of an irregular area (p. 143). And that Kolmogorov was hot on the track of a final synthesizing set of theories related to probability when he died--leaving a vacuum felt to this day.Dr. Salsburg has met a surprising number of the major players in modern statistics, which lends a sense of "here and now" that's not often seen in books that are meant to provide an overview of the history of a field.In some very great sense, this is a book of philosophy that borders on the spiritual. As Dr. Salsburg notes "My experience in scientific research has led me to believe that the statistical statement of faith is more likely to be true than the deterministic one." (p. 94) I can't help but quote the magnificent sentiments on page 297-8: "The world `out there' is an exceedingly complicated mass of sensations, events, and turmoil. With Thomas Kuhn, I do not believe that the human mind is capable of organizing a structure of ideas that can come even close to describing what is really out there. Any attempt to do so contains fundamental faults. Eventually, those faults will become so obvious that the scientific model must be continuously modified and eventually discarded in favor of a more subtle one. We can expect the statistical revolution will eventually run its course and be replaced by something else."If I'd been able to read this book as a young person, I'd have changed my career path to statistics.

This book is an enjoyable and easy to read overview of the history of statistics in the 20th century by means of mini-biographies of many of the most important contributors to the field. It is interspersed with an occasional reflection on the author's experience in learning, practicing and teaching statistics. The author is unpretentious and sincere in his desire to relate statistics to a person with no mathematical background, although having taken some statistics is probably necessary to grasp some of the concepts without requiring bit of internet searching (i.e. "p-value").I am currently taking the second in a two-part series of undergraduate applied statistics courses from my university. I'm not mathematically inclined and don't intuitively grasp the many formulas presented to us, as do many of my math-major classmates. Having a historical context in which to place these formulas and knowing the reason for which some of them were discovered helps me to remember and appreciate them. I wish each math class had a small historical perspective aspect as it would greatly assist others with learning styles similar to mine. Alas, this does not describe the pedagogy I've experienced in any math class. I took comfort in the chapters where the author introduced historical individuals who held disdain for those who wished to keep math "pure" and utterly abstract. This love of the abstract seems to dominate the profession and most math majors as I feel a disdain for the non-mathematically inclined seething in the teaching styles and comments made in my classes.Nevertheless, I have met a few professors and graduate students with a passion for relating mathematics to every individual, regardless of their mathematical aptitudes. The author, David Salsburg, is certainly one of them and has encouraged me to continue on in pursuit of a deeper understanding of mathematics and statistics.I commented in the subject that this book is a bit rough around the edges. By this I mean that many chapters seem to end almost before they have begun, others are a bit repetitive, and some seem to be poorly placed in the general timeline the book seems to follow. The most glaring of these is a chapter relating the gathering of many great statisticians in the early 20th century. Ocean faring steam ships seem to still have been the major form of long distance intercontinental travel making these gatherings rare. The author is able to invoke the humanity of many of his subjects in an excellent attempt to build up the empathy of the reader. The chapter ends with the death of one of the eldest members of this group on his return journey leaving the reader with a sense of sadness that these friends will never meet again. The fellow who passed on had been the subject of and present in several previous chapters but, anachronistically, the very next page begins another chapter on the man's life and work. It ruins the nice biographical storyline which the book had been following and shakes the reader gruffly out of the sense of having been present and knowing these individuals personally through their struggles and achievements.Otherwise, this is a fine book, a relatively quick read, and deserving of a solid four stars.

I enjoy reading this book so much that I cannot put it down. There are some statisticians/mathematicians who can use plain language to convey complicated math ideas. Salsburg is one of them. He presents those ideas not only from a statistical/scientific perspective but also from a philosophical perspective. The overall tone of this book is very relaxing and soothing, like telling some bedside stories to a child. Every character in this book is so vivid, from Karl Pearson, R.A. Fisher to Chester Bliss, etc. The author's presentation is quite objective, which I appreciate a lot. You can see how people initially with limited backgrounds in math made major contributions to this field through self-study and cooperation. I cannot recommend this book enough.

A book full of history of statistics in the last century

All great statisticians stories and interesting incident of from their life is given great a very interesting way. Once you hold it in hand you are not going leave before its completion.Warning: This book is only for data science enthusiast.

I loved reading this book. I am a scientist, but not a statistician, although I do use some statistical tools in my work. I was afraid this book would be too technical, because let's face it, statisticians tend to write "introductions" that are anything but. However, I was pleasantly surprised by "The Lady Tasting Tea", and I wholeheartedly recommend it. It reads just like a novel, it is entertaining, fascinating, linked to examples of applications. It did widen my outlook on statistical methods available to me and the scientific community, and placed some techniques I have been using in their general context.

Interesantisimo. Muy bien redactado, explica el trasfondo de muchas "normas" de la estadistica que no merecen ser tales. Parece ser que a algunos matematicos se les ha dado por extrapolar resultados de pruebas muy restringidas como si fueran aplicables en todos. Los resultados de las observaciones en la vida real no tienen una distribusion simetrica, ergo la exigencia de cumplir con un 5% de probabilidad no tiene fundamento.

The book has been written in a quite interesting way that really motivates a person to continue reading and enjoy it. It tells the story behind each statistical method or concept, the reason of why and how do they develop, etc. I really like the book and recommend it to whom loves statistics (even if like me is not a statistian).