Birth of Statistics

from: http://home.ubalt.edu/ntsbarsh/stat-data/Topics.htm

The birth of statistics occurred in mid-17th century. A commoner, named John Graunt, who was a native of London, begin reviewing a weekly church publication issued by the local parish clerk that listed the number of births, christenings, and deaths in each parish. These so called Bills of Mortality also listed the causes of death. Graunt who was a shopkeeper organized this data in the forms we call descriptive statistics, which was published as Natural and Political Observation Made upon the Bills of Mortality. Shortly thereafter, he was elected as a member of Royal Society. Thus, statistics has to borrow some concepts from sociology, such as the concept of "Population". It has been argued that since statistics usually involves the study of human behavior, it cannot claim the precision of the physical sciences.