Random Assignment - History

History

Randomization was emphasized in the theory of statistical inference of Charles S. Peirce in "Illustrations of the Logic of Science" (1877–1878) and "A Theory of Probable Inference" (1883). Peirce applied randomization in the Peirce-Jastrow experiment on weight perception.

Charles S. Peirce randomly assigned volunteers to a blinded, repeated-measures design to evaluate their ability to discriminate weights. Peirce's experiment inspired other researchers in psychology and education, which developed a research tradition of randomized experiments in laboratories and specialized textbooks in the eighteen-hundreds.

Jerzy Neyman advocated randomization in survey sampling (1934) and in experiments (1923). Ronald A. Fisher advocated randomization in his book on experimental design (1935).

Read more about this topic:  Random Assignment

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    “The history of work has been, in part, the history of the worker’s body. Production depended on what the body could accomplish with strength and skill. Techniques that improve output have been driven by a general desire to decrease the pain of labor as well as by employers’ intentions to escape dependency upon that knowledge which only the sentient laboring body could provide.”
    —Shoshana Zuboff (b. 1951)

    “The history of his present majesty, is a history of unremitting injuries and usurpations ... all of which have in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world, for the truth of which we pledge a faith yet unsullied by falsehood.”
    —Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)

    “All history attests that man has subjected woman to his will, used her as a means to promote his selfish gratification, to minister to his sensual pleasures, to be instrumental in promoting his comfort; but never has he desired to elevate her to that rank she was created to fill. He has done all he could to debase and enslave her mind; and now he looks triumphantly on the ruin he has wrought, and say, the being he has thus deeply injured is his inferior.”
    —Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)