1. The Setting
In 1925 Oklahoma A&M College was a fledgling in the world of universities and statistics was newborn among academic disciplines. Although the word statistics appeared for the first in the Encyclopedia Britannica in 1797 (See Boorstin[1]), statistics as an academic discipline had not advanced very far by 1900. True, Karl Pearson had lectured on statistics at Gresham College, London from 1890 to 1893 and at University College, London from 1894 to 1896. Pearson had established the Biometrics laboratory in 1895 and with Francis Galton had established the journal Biometrika in 1901.
Upon the death of Francis Galton in 1911, Pearson accepted the Galton Chair of Eugenics at the bequest of Galton. In the same year he established a new department, the Department of Applied Statistics at University College. During the war years of World War I there was a suspension of progress in Pearson’s department but with the end of the war
he set about trying to make mathematics useful to researchers on campus. This led him to the teaching of statistics and the first statistics course in the Mathematics Department was offered in 1914-1915.
In the early 1920’s Snedecor began a collaboration with Henry A. Wallace, editor of Wallace’s Farmer in Des Moines, Iowa. In the spring of 1924 Snedecor and Wallace organized a Saturday afternoon seminar for faculty members to study statistical methods. From these Saturday afternoon seminars came the publication in 1925 of Correlation and Machine Calculation by Wallace and
Snedecor.
The year 1925 was a landmark year in statistics. In that year Pearson, 68 years of age, founded the Annals of Eugenics (now known as the Annals of Human Genetics). In the same year Fisher published a book of monumental importance, The Design of Experiments.
The following year the first course in statistics was offered at Oklahoma State University.
Last update: 08/18/2002
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