No Class: October 15

Statistics is often presented as a series of rules and procedures. However, it is a far richer subject than these formalities suggest. This course will emphasize the “why we do it” rather than the “how to.” For example, people resisted taking averages, because an average meant you were throwing away information. You were turning carefully measured numbers into one number, ignoring the details surrounding each number. Stephen Stigler, in the first chapter of The Seven Pillars of Statistical Wisdom, describes how this controversy evolved into our present-day acceptance of averages and linear regression.

We will read and discuss Stigler’s book. My role will be to guide the discussion and clarify points in the text. Each class will be devoted to understanding one pillar and how it developed. In the final class, we will try to put what we have learned into a coherent view of how statistics helps us understand the world.