Brief History of Statistics

The words STATISTICS was derived from the Latin word "status" or the Italian word "statista" which means "Political State".

In the past, the statistics was used by rulers. The application of statistics was very limited but rulers and kings needed information about lands, agriculture, commerce, population of their states to assess their military potential, their wealth, taxation, and other aspects of government.

Gottfried Achenwall used the word statistik at a German University in 1749 which means that political science of different countries. In 1771, W. Hooper (Englishman) used the word statistics in his translation of Elements of Universal Erudition written by Baron B.F. Bieford; in his book statistics has been defined as the science that teaches us what is the political arrangement of all the modern statistics, but old statistics also used as a part of the present statistics.

During the 18th century the English writer have used the word statistics in their works, so statistics has developed gradually during last few centuries. A lot of work has been done int he end of the nineteenth century.

At the beginning of the 20th century, William S. Gosset has developed the methods for decision making based on small set of data. During the 20th century several statistics are active in developing new methods, theories and application of  statistics. Now these days the availability of electronics computers is certainly a major factor in the modern development of statistics.