Classical statistics period,1mid-7th century to1early 9th century. Three schools of thought appeared in this period.

National potential school

The national strength school is dominated by German scholars. This school studies a country's geography, population, finance, military affairs, politics, legal system and other national affairs in a narrative way. Its founder is H. Corning (German, 1606- 1682). By 1723, M. Schmertzel (German, 1679- 1747) founded a lecture on statistics at the University of Jena.

Subsequently, the Frenchman G Ahenwall (17 19- 1772) began to formally teach statistics at the University of G? ttingen. The word "Statistik" was first put forward by Achenwall, and it is defined as an understanding of major national issues. The implication is that through this science, we can understand the traces of the rise and fall of the country. The original "statistics" were just written records.

J D Ancherson (Dane, 1700- 1765) was the first to arrange a country's land, population, religion, military, currency and weights and measures in a tabular column. This is the so-called "tabular statistics school" and also belongs to the national potential school.

Probability theory school

The school of probability theory is dominated by French scholars. This school originated from the study of winning or losing dice in gambling. Its founders are B Pascal (French, 1623- 1662) and P de Fermat (French,1601665). They discussed the possibility of gambling through communication. C Huygens (1629- 1695) is the author of Dice Gambling. A de Moivre (1667- 1754) discovered the normal equation.

At the same time, Swiss mathematician Bernoulli (1654- 1705) put forward binomial distribution theory. Since then, P·S· Laplacian (French, 1748- 1827) published On Probability Analysis in 18 14, which constructed a complete system of classical probability theory and applied it to the study of natural and social phenomena.

Poisson (French, 178 1- 1840) put forward Poisson distribution. K·F· gauss (Germany 1775- 1855) put forward the least square method, and he also found the error normal curve from observing the astronomical phenomena.

(3) political arithmetic school

Political arithmetic schools are mainly British. Britain is a country where capitalism developed earlier, and it is also a country that recorded and inferred population and economy with figures earlier. Its founders are two Englishmen, J. Grant (1620- 1674) and william petty (1623- 1687).

1662, the former published the book "Natural and Political Observations on the Death Table" and published the research results of the birth rate. It was observed that the percentage of all diseases and accidents in all causes of death was stable.

The latter's political arithmetic and methods of estimating national income are of great significance not only to economics, but also to the development of statistics. Although they didn't create the name "statistics", the method they used to explore the quantitative regularity of social and economic phenomena was actually "statistics". Later, Harley (German, 1656- 1742) compiled a life table.

Second, the modern statistical period.

Modern statistical period, from1early 9th century to early 20th century. Belgian a·J· Ketole (1796- 1874) began this period. He published the book Social Physics, put forward the concept of accidental error, and pointed out that the statistical method of one discipline can be used in other disciplines.

In statistical research, he first studied the statistics of astronomy and meteorology, and then studied the plant kingdom and human society with statistics. Based on probability theory, he used a lot of observation methods and comprehensive average methods to study, thus integrating quantitative analysis methods of observing group phenomena such as probability theory, Chinese studies and political arithmetic into a statistics, laying the foundation of modern statistics.

He held the 9th International Statistical Congress in Brussels, Belgium in 185 1 and then in London in 1855, and renamed it "International Statistical Institute", which has been in use ever since.

In addition, K.G.A. Knies (18 12- 1898) and C.L. Engel (1821-kloc-0/896) adopted a large number of documents. F Golton (UK,1822-1911) discovered the percentile, and he also created the concept of regression analysis from studying genetics and eugenics.

K Pearson (UK, 1857- 1936) put forward the empirical distribution function, correlation analysis, dynamic difference method, chi-square test and large sample sampling theory, and completed the descriptive statistics of the system. Some people think that he is the founder of modern statistics.

Third, the period of modern statistics

Modern statistical period, from the beginning of the 20th century to the present. During this period, W. S. Gosset (UK, 1876- 1937) published the T distribution under the pseudonym of students, which is the basis of small sample sampling theory.

E. Borer (187 1- 1956) laid the foundation of modern probability theory. R A Fisher (UK, 1890- 1962) put forward some methods and concepts, such as Z distribution, significance level, hypothesis testing, degree of freedom, experimental design and analysis of variance. In America, G. W. sned cor transformed the Z distribution into the F distribution.

A Wald (1902- 1950) proposed decision theory and sequential sampling method. J. V. Neumann and O. Morgenstern put forward the game theory, which made the decision theory more systematic. Naiman and Deming put forward the sampling survey method, which made great contributions to quality control and production management. Wiener's cybernetics and Shannon's information theory make the theory of inference statistics more perfect. American universities set statistics as an independent department from 1950, and awarded advanced degrees in statistics from 1955.

Since 1950s, statistics has been influenced by modern science and technology such as computer and information theory, and new research fields have emerged one after another, such as multivariate statistical analysis, stochastic process, nonparametric statistics and time series analysis. According to American scholars' estimation, modern statistics develops with exponential acceleration, new research branches are increasing and statistical application fields are expanding. The application of statistical methods in various disciplines has further promoted the in-depth and development of statistical method research.