The Lady Tasting Tea
by David Salsburg · first published 2001
80% recommend20% neutral
Why HN recommends it
History of statistics told through the lives of its key figures, giving working context for the field's methods; recommended as an engaging read for people who learn math through its history.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Discusses how statistics have changed the field of science in the twentieth century, focusing on the theories and ideas of famous scientists and thinkers.
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If you're of the mathematical school that thinks the best way to learn any math field is to walk through the history of how we got here, then I'd recommend the recent book "The Lady Tasting Tea". It traces through the history of the great mathematical minds who created the field of statistics, explains the problems they were solving, how and why they were able to solve them, and how future problems…
on “Programmers Need To Learn Statistics Or I Will Kill Them All” ↗There is a great book which teaches you statistics looking through its fascinating history. The Lady Tasting Tea: How Statistics Revolutionized Science in the Twentieth Century http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/106350.The_Lady_Tasting_T...
on “TDD, BDD, and the tea tasting lady” ↗"The Lady Tasting Tea"[1] is a fantastic book about statisticians. Someone recommended that book to me as an intro to stats, which it most certainly is not. However, if you have had even a single course in statistics, you…
on “Tales of Statisticians: George B. Dantzig” ↗…probability. You might enjoy following books. * Darrell Huff, Irving Geis How to Lie With Statistics * Ian Ayres Super Crunchers Why Thinking-by-Numbers Is the New Way to Be Smart * David Salsburg The Lady Tasting Tea How Statistics Revolutionized Science in the Twentieth Century * Emanuel Deman, Models Behaving Badly * Benoit Mandelbrot, Richard L. Hudson The Misbehavior of Markets A Fractal View of Financial Turbulence…
on “Ask HN: Good book about statistics and probability?” ↗…that are (were?) distant and to question assumptions: a lot of ideas that we take for granted as absolute truths are simply consensus-derived and have no objective reality. 2. On a similar theme, “The Lady Tasting Tea” (David Salsburg) was a wonderful history of the development of statistics as a mathematical discipline. I found it absolutely fascinating to map out how individual personalities were buffeted and shaped…
on “Ask HN: Which books have made you a better thinker and problem solver?” ↗Did not read that many books this year but this two books makes my list: 1)The Lady Tasting Tea: How Statistics Revolutionized Science in the Twentieth Century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lady_Tasting_Tea This book is about the history of Statistics which is weaved through the some remarkable…
on “Ask HN: Books you read in 2022 and recommend for 2023” ↗I read this story and several other very interesting ones in this great book detailing the history of evolution of modern statistics -- The Lady Tasting Tea: How Statistics Revolutionized Science in the Twentieth Century by David Salsburg. The author himself personally met with several leading figures that he describes. Highly recommended!
on “The t-test was invented at the Guinness brewery” ↗And "The Lady Tasting Tea" by David Salsburg is a nice history of statistics; 29 chapters, a little over 320 pages. [New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2001; ISBN 0-8050-7134-2 (PB)]
on “Lady tasting tea” ↗I am just finishing the book "The Lady Tasting Tea" and it created a good perspective on how the field of Statistics evolved over a period of time. I found it to be extremely important context to have. In fact, it was a much more informative read than…
on “Ask HN: Good books on history of mathematics?” ↗This explained the issues well. Thank you for posting it. Other reading material that may be of interest: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Lady-Tasting-Tea-Statistics-Revolution... Lady Tasting Tea: How Statistics Revolutionized Science in the Twentieth Century <a/> Taleb's The Black Swan and MoneyBall (especially if you enjoy baseball)
on “Four views of statistics: Frequentist, Bayesian, Likelihood, Info-Theoretic” ↗There are things like CONSORT[1] which kind of do this. Statisticians like Fisher[2] have a ton of good general advice of the design of experiments. (A plug for The Lady Tasting Tea[3] and the 7 Pillars of Statistical Wisdom[4] feels appropriate here.) On the whole though, most of the things you should and should not do are so domain specific its very hard to give much useful advice…
on “An erroneous paper on religion and generosity is retracted” ↗The Lady Tasting Tea was a great read on that exact topic.
on “The long story of how neural nets got to where they are [video]” ↗http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_tasting_tea "David Salsburg[5] reports that a colleague of Fisher, H. Fairfield Smith, revealed that in the test, the woman got all eight cups correct.[6] The chance of someone who just guesses getting all correct,…
on “A Nice Cup of Tea by George Orwell (1946)” ↗I've always loved the book, I recently gave it to a co-worker with somewhat Feynman-like qualities. He reciprocated with 'The Lady Tasting Tea: How Statistics Revolutionized Science in the Twentieth Century', Salsburg.
on “Ask HN: What book have you given as a gift?” ↗Anyone has anything to say about The Lady Tasting Tea[0]? I'd like to hear/read your thoughts about this book. (I came across it on the comment section of John D Cook's blog post[1] years ago but haven't had a chance to read it yet). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lady_Tasting_Tea…
on “Ask HN: What are your favorite statistics and probability textbooks?” ↗