Lady Tasting Tea

by David Salsburg

Book Overview

An insightful, revealing history of the magical mathematics that transformed our world. The Lady Tasting Tea is not a book of dry facts and figures, but the history of great individuals who dared to look at the world in a new way.

At a summer tea party in Cambridge, England, a guest states that tea poured into milk tastes different from milk poured into tea. Her notion is shouted down by the scientific minds of the group...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0805071342
• ISBN13: 9780805071344
• Release Date: May 2002
• Publisher: Holt Paperbacks
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.4" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

a biostatisticians view of 20th century statistics

The Lady Tasting Tea is a new book by David Salsburg (a Ph.D. mathematical statistician, who recently retired from Pfizer Pharmaceuticals in Connecticut). The title of the book is taken from the famous example that R. A. Fisher used in his book "The Design of Experiments" to express the ideas and principles of statistical design to answer research questions. The subtitle "How Statistics Revolutionized Science in the Twentieth Century" really tells what the book is about. The author relates the statistical developments of the 20th Century through descriptions of the famous statisticians and the problems they studied. The author conveys this from the perspective of a statistician with good theoretical training and much experience in academia and industry. He is a fellow of the American Statistical Association and a retired Senior Research Fellow from Pfizer has published three technical books and over 50 journal articles and has taught statistics at various universities including the Harvard School of Public Health, the University of Connecticut and the University of Pennsylvania. This book is written in layman's terms and is intended for scientists and medical researchers as well as for statistician who are interested in the history of statistics. It just was published in early 2001. On the back-cover there are glowing words of praise from the epidemiologist Alvan Feinstein and from statisticians Barbara Bailar and Brad Efron. After reading their comments I decided to buy it and I found it difficult to put down. Salsburg has met and interacted with many of the statisticians in the book and provides an interesting perspective and discussion of most of the important topics including those that head the agenda of the computer age and the 21st century. He discusses the life and work of many famous statisticians including Francis Galton, Karl Pearson, Egon Pearson, Jerzy Neyman, Abraham Wald, John Tukey, E. J. G. Pitman, Ed Deming, R. A. Fisher, George Box, David Cox, Gertrude Cox, Emil Gumbel, L. H. C. Tippett, Stella Cunliffe, Florence Nightingale David, William Sealy Gosset, Frank Wilcoxon, I. J. Good, Harold Hotelling, Morris Hansen, William Cochran, Persi Diaconis, Brad Efron, Paul Levy, Jerry Cornfield, Samuel Wilks, Andrei Kolmogorov, Guido Castelnuovo, Francesco Cantelli and Chester Bliss. Many other probabilists and statisticians are also mentioned including David Blackwell, Joseph Berkson, Herman Chernoff, Stephen Fienberg, William Madow, Nathan Mantel, Odd Aalen, Fred Mosteller, Jimmie Savage, Evelyn Fix, William Feller, Bruno deFinetti, Richard Savage, Erich Lehmann (first name mispelled), Corrado Gini, G. U. Yule, Manny Parzen, Walter Shewhart, Stephen Stigler, Nancy Mann, S. N. Roy, C. R. Rao, P. C. Mahalanobis, N. V. Smirnov, Jaroslav Hajek and Don Rubin among others. The final chapter "The Idol with Feet of Clay" is philosophical in nature but deals with the important fact that in spite of the widespread and valuable use of the st

A gem

I personally have a deep admiration for statistical science. Probability is everywhere, from Heisenberg to quantum mechanics to common primary school science experiments. What constitutes a good experiment? What questions should we ask? How should we interpret the data? Indeed, what data should we be expecting? What if the data are contrary to our expectations? More directly, how did these methodologies come to be? What were their motivations? Statistics and probability presently provides some of the best tools science has to offer for exploring our world, and making sense of it. These are tools forged by individuals over the past centuries with real problems to solve, despite their own very human problems. This extremely readable book helps tell their fascinating stories and the history of the evolution of statistical methods now so prevalent in our sciences. I bought this book as a gift for a doctor friend of mine, and promptly borrowed it from her after thumbing through it. I couldn't put it down for 2 days, nor stop talking about it. Absolutely a must read for anyone with a realization of the importance statistics plays in modern society. 5 easy stars for this one.

Excellent description of how statistics was founded

I have taken courses in statistics, taught it many times and solved several statistical problems that have appeared in journals. But until I read this book, I never really thought about it in so deep and philosophical a manner. Which is most unusual, in that it is a book written to a popular audience. Some of the very deep and critical problems raised consider questions such as, "How do you deal with outliers?" An outlier is a data point that differs from the others by a great deal. The fact that it is a data point means that it is part of the sample, but the large differences from the others means that there are valid reasons to consider it flawed. Given these differences, including or excluding an outlier can lead to substantial changes in the results. Other issues concern the accuracy of measurement, for example, when can specific tests be applied and what consequences can be associated with the results. We saw an example of such complexity in the 2000 presidential election in the United States. The vote was essentially a tie, with the differences being well within all possible measures of sampling error. As some of the wiser news commentators pointed out, it is impossible to count every vote, an election is only an approximation of the true, unknown value. No statistician could have said it better. Given the context, Plato's idea of the abstract form appears in this history of the development of statistics as a discipline separate from mathematics. A statistical sample is only an estimate of a value that will never be known. The key is to get an approximation that is close enough to be usable in whatever the current context is. In this respect, statistics is like engineering, where the interest is in getting usable, rather than precise information. The author also describes many details of the historical environments that the principal early statisticians worked in. Repressive governments such as...Germany, ...Italy and the communist Soviet Union provided the backdrop of the actions of many of the people who founded statistics. While the sentiments of the author are clear, he does a good job in avoiding overt political statements. What I liked best about the book was the clear description of the life and career of Ronald Aylmer Fisher, a man whose genius is rarely spoken of in histories of science. And yet, some of the ideas that he expounded are the basis for many of the decisions that are made in our modern society. All new medications must pass rigorous statistical tests for efficacy and safety, and virtually every scientist must subject their data to some form of statistical analysis. This is the most interesting book on statistics that I have ever read. It caused me to think about the underlying philosophy of statistics in ways that I had never done so before. Furthermore, it is written at a level where non-mathematicians/statisticians can understand it. I soundly recommend it for personal enjoyment as well as for any course in

great look at statistics in the 20th Century

The Lady Tasting Tea is a new book by David Salsburg (a Ph.D. mathematical statistician, who recently retired from Pfizer Pharmaceuticals in Connecticut). The title of the book is taken from the famous example that R. A. Fisher used in his book "The Design of Experiments" to express the ideas and principles of statistical design to answer research questions. The subtitle "How Statistics Revolutionized Science in the Twentieth Century" really tells what the book is about. The author relates the statistical developments of the 20th Century through descriptions of the famous statisticians and the problems they studied. The author conveys this from the perspective of a statistician with good theoretical training and much experience in academia and industry. He is a fellow of the American Statistical Association and a retired Senior Research Fellow from Pfizer has published three technical books and over 50 journal articles and has taught statistics at various universities including the Harvard School of Public Health, the University of Connecticut and the University of Pennsylvania.This book is written in layman's terms and is intended for scientists and medical researchers as well as for statistician who are interested in the history of statistics. It just was published in early 2001. On the back-cover there are glowing words of praise from the epidemiologist Alvan Feinstein and from statisticians Barbara Bailar and Brad Efron. After reading their comments I decided to buy it and I found it difficult to put down. Salsburg has met and interacted with many of the statisticians in the book and provides an interesting perspective and discussion of most of the important topics including those that head the agenda of the computer age and the 21st century. He discusses the life and work of many famous statisticians including Francis Galton, Karl Pearson, Egon Pearson, Jerzy Neyman, Abraham Wald, John Tukey, E. J. G. Pitman, Ed Deming, R. A. Fisher, George Box, David Cox, Gertrude Cox, Emil Gumbel, L. H. C. Tippett, Stella Cunliffe, Florence Nightingale David, William Sealy Gosset, Frank Wilcoxon, I. J. Good, Harold Hotelling, Morris Hansen, William Cochran, Persi Diaconis, Brad Efron, Paul Levy, Jerry Cornfield, Samuel Wilks, Andrei Kolmogorov, Guido Castelnuovo, Francesco Cantelli and Chester Bliss. Many other probabilists and statisticians are also mentioned including David Blackwell, Joseph Berkson, Herman Chernoff, Stephen Fienberg, William Madow, Nathan Mantel, Odd Aalen, Fred Mosteller, Jimmie Savage, Evelyn Fix, William Feller, Bruno deFinetti, Richard Savage, Erich Lehmann (first name mispelled), Corrado Gini, G. U. Yule, Manny Parzen, Walter Shewhart, Stephen Stigler, Nancy Mann, S. N. Roy, C. R. Rao, P. C. Mahalanobis, N. V. Smirnov, Jaroslav Hajek and Don Rubin among others.The final chapter "The Idol with Feet of Clay" is philosophical in nature but deals with the important fact that in spite of the widespread and valuable use of

Wonderfully well written, entertaining, and informative

The intense media attention given to the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem a few years ago was followed by the publication of many books on mathematics for non-mathematicians. Dr. Salsburg's book is arguably among the best of them. It has many interesting and illuminating anecdotes about the most influential statisticians in the early 20th century, which is when the Statistical Revolution (as aptly called by the author) took place. Important developments are clearly explained in their historical context, and their implications for current (i.e., 21st century) scientific research are given. The student of Statistics will get to know the people behind the names mentioned in the textbooks. The book is non-technical and written for the general public, but as a statistician myself I can say that I was no less than delighted reading it. In fact, two chapters (on probit and sample selection) deal with concepts I'm using in an epidemiological manuscript!