A Brief History of Statistics

Part 1 —The Rising — From normal distribution to Regression.

In the mid-nineteenth century, humanity was in a state of apotheosis with scientific discoveries, a great wave of optimism seized Europe with the new possibilities. It seemed like a matter of time before we learned all the laws that govern nature. We have made great progress in physics, biology, astronomy, etc. that justified this excess of optimism. It seemed that if we had good measurements we could describe and predict anything. Well, needless to say, the positivists were…