History of Statistics

AD 2: Evidence of a census completed during the Han Dynasty survives.

1500s: Girolamo Cardano calculates probabilities of different dice rolls.

1600s: Edmund Halley relates death rate to age and develops mortality tables.

1700s: Thomas Jefferson directs the first U.S. Census.

1839: The American Statistical Association is formed.

1894: The term “standard deviation” is introduced by Karl Pearson.

1935: R.A. Fisher publishes Design of Experiments.

For more history, check out this timeline of statistics.