Statistics has developed as a field through seminal ideas and fascinating controversies. This book concerns a wide-ranging set of 13 important statistical topics, grouped into three general areas: Philosophical Approaches to Statistical Inference; Important Statistical Methodology for Applications; and Topics on Statistical Design, focusing on the role of randomization. The key papers on each topic are discussed with commentaries to help explain them. The goal is to expand the readers’ knowledge of the statistics literature and encourage a historical perspective.

Features:

• Discusses a number of important ideas in the history of statistics, including the likelihood principle, Bayes vs frequentist approaches to inference, alternative approaches to least squares regression, shrinkage estimation, hypothesis testing, multiple comparisons, and more
• Provides a deeper understanding and appreciation of the history of statistics
• Discusses disagreements in the literature, which make for interesting reading
• Gives guidance on various aspects of statistics research by reading good examples in the literature
• Promotes the use of good English style in the presentation of statistical ideas, by learning from papers that are well written
• Includes an appendix of style tips on writing statistical papers

The book is aimed at researchers and graduate students in statistics and biostatistics, who are interested in the history of statistics and would like to deepen their understanding of seminal ideas and controversies. It could be used to teach a special topics course, or will be useful for any researcher keen to understand the subject better and improve their statistical presentation skills.