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  • 1.  gambling, statistics, and building a historical data base of statistics

    Posted 02-08-2017 09:39


    Friends,
    I have been reading about the foundations of statistics in the ancient world (especially Egypt).  There does not appear to be much documentation.  Several anecdotal sources view gambling, in particular dice as a core to probability and statistics.  Dice have been found with the mummies of Egypt, as well as mentioned in Mesopotamia, Sumatra  and other places. Also as Fritz told me gambling has been rather ubiquidous throughout history and society.  Any thoughts about the relationship of gambling, and statistics?  If you would like send a note to ronaldlaporte@gmail.com.

    The reason I am interested is that if we can find evidence that Egypt is one of the cradles for the development of statistics, it would be nice to draw a line from ancient egypt dice, and birth of statistics, to Deming, to Big data at the Serageldin Library of Alexandria.

    The largest library in the world is the Library of Congress, with 16,000,000 books, the Library of alexandria currently has 3,000,000. However, the library of Congress has 4098 statistics books, while the BA Serageldin library, 6711, and soon to be 15000.  We are capturing the history of statistics by examining the epidemiology of statistics books.  Please consider contributing your dusty old statistics books to help young investigators, as well as to build the nearly complete history of statistics in the 20th century.

    ron

     

    This history of statistics is most fascinating
    ron

    Global Health, so near, so far

    "Health is a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity". (WHO)

     Ronald E. LaPorte, Ph.D.
    Emeritus Director WHO Collaborating Center
    Professor Emeritus Epidemiology
    University of Pittsburgh
    Pittsburgh, PA, USA
    Telephone home 724 934 9023     Mobile  724 759 3283

    Supercourse Project - www.pitt.edu/~super1 
    Science Supercourse - ssc.bibalex.org 
    Research Methods Library of Alexandria - http://ssc.bibalex.org/helpdesk/introduction.jsf
    Bibliotheca Alexandrina (BA) African Networks - http://afn.bibalex.org/GeneralPortal.aspx
    Central Asian Journal of Global Health -  cajgh.pitt.edu/


  • 2.  RE: gambling, statistics, and building a historical data base of statistics

    Posted 02-08-2017 09:57
    Wow, this is exciting work. Looking forward to what you find. 

    Enayet


    ------Original Message------



    Friends,
    I have been reading about the foundations of statistics in the ancient world (especially Egypt).  There does not appear to be much documentation.  Several anecdotal sources view gambling, in particular dice as a core to probability and statistics.  Dice have been found with the mummies of Egypt, as well as mentioned in Mesopotamia, Sumatra  and other places. Also as Fritz told me gambling has been rather ubiquidous throughout history and society.  Any thoughts about the relationship of gambling, and statistics?  If you would like send a note to ronaldlaporte@gmail.com.

    The reason I am interested is that if we can find evidence that Egypt is one of the cradles for the development of statistics, it would be nice to draw a line from ancient egypt dice, and birth of statistics, to Deming, to Big data at the Serageldin Library of Alexandria.

    The largest library in the world is the Library of Congress, with 16,000,000 books, the Library of alexandria currently has 3,000,000. However, the library of Congress has 4098 statistics books, while the BA Serageldin library, 6711, and soon to be 15000.  We are capturing the history of statistics by examining the epidemiology of statistics books.  Please consider contributing your dusty old statistics books to help young investigators, as well as to build the nearly complete history of statistics in the 20th century.

    ron

     

    This history of statistics is most fascinating
    ron

    Global Health, so near, so far

    "Health is a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity". (WHO)

     Ronald E. LaPorte, Ph.D.
    Emeritus Director WHO Collaborating Center
    Professor Emeritus Epidemiology
    University of Pittsburgh
    Pittsburgh, PA, USA
    Telephone home 724 934 9023     Mobile  724 759 3283

    Supercourse Project - www.pitt.edu/~super1 
    Science Supercourse - ssc.bibalex.org 
    Research Methods Library of Alexandria - http://ssc.bibalex.org/helpdesk/introduction.jsf
    Bibliotheca Alexandrina (BA) African Networks - http://afn.bibalex.org/GeneralPortal.aspx
    Central Asian Journal of Global Health -  cajgh.pitt.edu/


  • 3.  RE: gambling, statistics, and building a historical data base of statistics

    Posted 02-09-2017 12:22
    Perhaps we should distinguish between probability and statistics.  Unless one is testing whether the dice (or dice thrower) are fair, we are dealing with probability.  

    ------------------------------
    Emil M Friedman, PhD
    emilfriedman@gmail.com
    http://www.statisticalconsulting.org
    ------------------------------



  • 4.  RE: gambling, statistics, and building a historical data base of statistics

    Posted 02-10-2017 09:48
    Emil,
    Thank you so much.  It is a bit murky to me as to what are the precursors of statistics prior to the 20th century, especially back to the ancient world. Stephen Stigler's book on the seven pillars of wisdom of statistics suggested Aggregation, Information, Likelihood, intercomparison, regression, design, and residual.  This is quite a nice book, and one of the few on the history of statistics but starts out in the modern era.  

    What I would like to know is what was happening before the 20th century.  I am reaching out to historians in Egypt to try  and find out.  Where does Arabic numbers, census, gambling, probability fit? 

    It is amazing to me that in departments of the history and philosophy of science there is very little on the history and philosophy of statistics, despite you all being at the core of science.  I wonder why

    You seemed to imply that probability is separate from statistics.
    It might at some point to have a conference on the history and philosophy of statistics, from the pyramids to big data

    The diagram produced by the ASA on history could be a good starting point.

    Sorry about the Musing of an epidemiologist, but we are building the largest historical archive of statistic at the library of alexandria.  It would be wonderful to have a Mesopotamia cuneiform from 3000 years ago that describes Chi Square!!!

    Thanks for all your help...also, think of donating your statistic books, old a new, to the Library of Alexandria.  Euclid will love it

    ron
      

    ------------------------------
    Ronald LaPorteProfessor EmeritusDept. Epidemiology
    ------------------------------

    Original Message


  • 5.  RE: gambling, statistics, and building a historical data base of statistics

    Posted 02-10-2017 13:56
    "Separate" might be too strong a word.  Statistics is based on probability theory and cannot be understood without first understanding probability.  But one can do all sorts of things with probability without bringing in statistics.

    In the ancient world I would imagine that religious beliefs often clouded the issue.

    ------------------------------
    Emil M Friedman, PhD
    emilfriedman@gmail.com
    http://www.statisticalconsulting.org
    ------------------------------

    Original Message


  • 6.  RE: gambling, statistics, and building a historical data base of statistics

    Posted 02-13-2017 11:01

    Here are some references:

    Games, Gods, and Gambling - A history of probability and statistical ideas by F N David
    Emergence of Probability by Hacking
    Taming of Chance by Hacking
    Against the Gods - the remarkable story of risk by Bernstein
    The Broken Dice by Ekeland

    Enjoy!

    Bart Holland

    P.S. I also had a little article in Chance, years ago, called the Chevalier de Mere and the Power of Excessive Gambling
    but I need to rush to a meeting now and then the airport so I won't dig out the reference right now.





    ------------------------------
    Bart Holland
    ------------------------------

    Original Message


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