Exploratory Data Analysis - History

History

Many EDA ideas can be traced back to earlier authors, for example:

  • Francis Galton emphasized order statistics and quantiles.
  • Arthur Lyon Bowley used precursors of the stemplot and five-number summary (Bowley actually used a "seven-figure summary", including the extremes, deciles and quartiles, along with the median - see his Elementary Manual of Statistics (3rd edn., 1920), p. 62 – he defines "the maximum and minimum, median, quartiles and two deciles" as the "seven positions").
  • Andrew Ehrenberg articulated a philosophy of data reduction (see his book of the same name).

The Open University course Statistics in Society (MDST 242), took the above ideas and merged them with Gottfried Noether's work, which introduced statistical inference via coin-tossing and the median test.

Read more about this topic:  Exploratory Data Analysis

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    “When the coherence of the parts of a stone, or even that composition of parts which renders it extended; when these familiar objects, I say, are so inexplicable, and contain circumstances so repugnant and contradictory; with what assurance can we decide concerning the origin of worlds, or trace their history from eternity to eternity?”
    —David Hume (1711–1776)

    “The greatest honor history can bestow is that of peacemaker.”
    —Richard M. Nixon (1913–1995)

    “When we of the so-called better classes are scared as men were never scared in history at material ugliness and hardship; when we put off marriage until our house can be artistic, and quake at the thought of having a child without a bank-account and doomed to manual labor, it is time for thinking men to protest against so unmanly and irreligious a state of opinion.”
    —William James (1842–1910)