Before 1600

• 9th Century - Al-Kindi
  Al-Kindi
  ' , known as "the Philosopher of the Arabs", was a Muslim Arab philosopher, mathematician, physician, and musician. Al-Kindi was the first of the Muslim peripatetic philosophers, and is unanimously hailed as the "father of Islamic or Arabic philosophy" for his synthesis, adaptation and promotion...
  
   was the first to use statistics to decipher encrypted messages and developed the first code breaking algorithm in the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, based on frequency analysis. He wrote a book entitled "Manuscript on Deciphering Cryptographic Messages", containing detailed discussions on statistics
• 1560s (published 1663) – Cardano's Liber de ludo aleae attempts to calculate probabilities of dice throws
• 1577 – Bartolomé de Medina
  Bartolomé de Medina
  Bartolomé de Medina, Spanish theologian and mining specialist, was born in Medina de Rioseco, Spain in 1527. A member of the Dominican Order and a student of Francisco de Vitoria, he was professor of theology at the University of Salamanca and a member of the School of Salamanca...
  
   defends probabilism
  Catholic Probabilism
  In Catholic moral theology, probabilism provides a way of answering the question about what to do when one does not know what to do. Probabilism proposes that one can follow a probable opinion regarding whether an act may be performed morally, even though the opposite opinion is more probable...
  
  , the view that in ethics one may follow a probable opinion even if the opposite is more probable

17th century

• 1654 – Pascal
  Blaise Pascal
  Blaise Pascal , was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and Catholic philosopher. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a tax collector in Rouen...
  
   and Fermat
  Pierre de Fermat
  Pierre de Fermat was a French lawyer at the Parlement of Toulouse, France, and an amateur mathematician who is given credit for early developments that led to infinitesimal calculus, including his adequality...
  
   create the mathematical theory of probability
  Probability
  Probability is ordinarily used to describe an attitude of mind towards some proposition of whose truth we arenot certain. The proposition of interest is usually of the form "Will a specific event occur?" The attitude of mind is of the form "How certain are we that the event will occur?" The...
  
  ,
• 1657 – Huygens's De ratiociniis in ludo aleae is the first book on mathematical probability,
• 1662 – Graunt
  John Graunt
  John Graunt was one of the first demographers, though by profession he was a haberdasher. Born in London, the eldest of seven or eight children of Henry and Mary Graunt. His father was a draper who had moved to London from Hampshire...
  
  's Natural and Political Observations Made upon the Bills of Mortality makes inferences from statistical data on deaths in London,
• 1693 – Halley prepares the first mortality tables statistically relating death rate to age,

18th century

• 1710 – Arbuthnot
  John Arbuthnot
  John Arbuthnot, often known simply as Dr. Arbuthnot, , was a physician, satirist and polymath in London...
  
   argues that the constancy of the ratio of male to female births is a sign of divine providence,
• 1713 – Posthumous publication of Jacob Bernoulli's Ars Conjectandi
  Ars Conjectandi
  Ars Conjectandi is a combinatorial mathematical paper written by Jakob Bernoulli and published in 1713, eight years after his death, by his nephew, Niklaus Bernoulli. The seminal work consolidated, most notably among other combinatorial topics, probability theory: indeed, it is widely regarded as...
  
  , containing the first derivation of a law of large numbers
  Law of large numbers
  In probability theory, the law of large numbers is a theorem that describes the result of performing the same experiment a large number of times...
  
  ,
• 1724 – Abraham de Moivre
  Abraham de Moivre
  Abraham de Moivre was a French mathematician famous for de Moivre's formula, which links complex numbers and trigonometry, and for his work on the normal distribution and probability theory. He was a friend of Isaac Newton, Edmund Halley, and James Stirling...
  
   studies mortality statistics and the foundation of the theory of annuities in Annuities on Lives,
• 1733 – Abraham de Moivre introduces the normal distribution to approximate the binomial distribution in probability,
• 1739 – Hume
  David Hume
  David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, known especially for his philosophical empiricism and skepticism. He was one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment...
  
  's Treatise of Human Nature argues that inductive reasoning
  Inductive reasoning
  Inductive reasoning, also known as induction or inductive logic, is a kind of reasoning that constructs or evaluates propositions that are abstractions of observations. It is commonly construed as a form of reasoning that makes generalizations based on individual instances...
  
   is unjustified,
• 1761 – Thomas Bayes
  Thomas Bayes
  Thomas Bayes was an English mathematician and Presbyterian minister, known for having formulated a specific case of the theorem that bears his name: Bayes' theorem...
  
   proves Bayes' theorem
  Bayes' theorem
  In probability theory and applications, Bayes' theorem relates the conditional probabilities P and P. It is commonly used in science and engineering. The theorem is named for Thomas Bayes ....
  
  ,
• 1786 – Playfair
  William Playfair
  William Playfair was a Scottish engineer and political economist, the founder of graphical methods of statistics....
  
  's Commercial and Political Atlas introduces graphs
  Line chart
  A line chart or line graph is a type of graph, which displays information as a series of data points connected by straight line segments. It is a basic type of chart common in many fields. It is an extension of a scatter graph, and is created by connecting a series of points that represent...
  
   and bar chart
  Bar chart
  A bar chart or bar graph is a chart with rectangular bars with lengths proportional to the values that they represent. The bars can be plotted vertically or horizontally....
  
  s of data,

19th century

• 1801 – Gauss
  Gauss
  Gauss may refer to:*Carl Friedrich Gauss, German mathematician and physicist*Gauss , a unit of magnetic flux density or magnetic induction*GAUSS , a software package*Gauss , a crater on the moon...
  
   predicts the orbit of Ceres using a line of best fit
• 1805 – Adrien-Marie Legendre
  Adrien-Marie Legendre
  Adrien-Marie Legendre was a French mathematician.The Moon crater Legendre is named after him.- Life :...
  
   introduces the method of least squares for fitting a curve to a given set of observations,
• 1814 – Laplace's Essai philosophique sur les probabilités defends a definition of probabilities in terms of equally possible cases, introduces generating function
  Generating function
  In mathematics, a generating function is a formal power series in one indeterminate, whose coefficients encode information about a sequence of numbers an that is indexed by the natural numbers. Generating functions were first introduced by Abraham de Moivre in 1730, in order to solve the general...
  
  s and Laplace transforms, uses conjugate prior
  Conjugate prior
  In Bayesian probability theory, if the posterior distributions p are in the same family as the prior probability distribution p, the prior and posterior are then called conjugate distributions, and the prior is called a conjugate prior for the likelihood...
  
  s for exponential families, proves an early version of the Bernstein–von Mises theorem
  Bernstein–von Mises theorem
  In Bayesian inference, the Bernstein–von Mises theorem provides the basis for the important result that the posterior distribution for unknown quantities in any problem is effectively independent of the prior distribution once the amount of information supplied by a sample of data is large...
  
   on the asymptotic irrelevance of prior distributions on the limiting posterior distribution and the role of the Fisher information
  Fisher information
  In mathematical statistics and information theory, the Fisher information is the variance of the score. In Bayesian statistics, the asymptotic distribution of the posterior mode depends on the Fisher information and not on the prior...
  
   on asymptotically normal posterior modes.
• 1835 – Quetelet
  Adolphe Quetelet
  Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet was a Belgian astronomer, mathematician, statistician and sociologist. He founded and directed the Brussels Observatory and was influential in introducing statistical methods to the social sciences...
  
  's Treatise on Man introduces social science statistics and the concept of the "average man",
• 1866 – Venn
  John Venn
  Donald A. Venn FRS , was a British logician and philosopher. He is famous for introducing the Venn diagram, which is used in many fields, including set theory, probability, logic, statistics, and computer science....
  
  's Logic of Chance defends the frequency interpretation of probability.
• 1877–1883 – Charles Sanders Peirce outlines frequentist statistics, emphasizing the use of objective randomization
  Randomization
  Randomization is the process of making something random; this means:* Generating a random permutation of a sequence .* Selecting a random sample of a population ....
  
   in experiments
  Randomized experiment
  In science, randomized experiments are the experiments that allow the greatest reliability and validity of statistical estimates of treatment effects...
  
   and in sampling
  Sampling (statistics)
  In statistics and survey methodology, sampling is concerned with the selection of a subset of individuals from within a population to estimate characteristics of the whole population....
  
  . Peirce also invented an optimally designed experiment
  Optimal design
  Optimal designs are a class of experimental designs that are optimal with respect to some statistical criterion.In the design of experiments for estimating statistical models, optimal designs allow parameters to be estimated without bias and with minimum-variance...
  
   for regression
  Response surface methodology
  In statistics, response surface methodology explores the relationships between several explanatory variables and one or more response variables. The method was introduced by G. E. P. Box and K. B. Wilson in 1951. The main idea of RSM is to use a sequence of designed experiments to obtain an...
  
  .
• 1880 – Thiele
  Thorvald N. Thiele
  Thorvald Nicolai Thiele was a Danish astronomer, actuary and mathematician, most notable for his work in statistics, interpolation and the three-body problem. He was the first to propose a mathematical theory of Brownian motion...
  
   gives a mathematical analysis of Brownian motion
  Brownian motion
  Brownian motion or pedesis is the presumably random drifting of particles suspended in a fluid or the mathematical model used to describe such random movements, which is often called a particle theory.The mathematical model of Brownian motion has several real-world applications...
  
  , introduces the likelihood function
  Likelihood function
  In statistics, a likelihood function is a function of the parameters of a statistical model, defined as follows: the likelihood of a set of parameter values given some observed outcomes is equal to the probability of those observed outcomes given those parameter values...
  
  , and invents cumulant
  Cumulant
  In probability theory and statistics, the cumulants κn of a probability distribution are a set of quantities that provide an alternative to the moments of the distribution. The moments determine the cumulants in the sense that any two probability distributions whose moments are identical will have...
  
  s.
• 1888 – Galton introduces the concept of correlation
  Correlation
  In statistics, dependence refers to any statistical relationship between two random variables or two sets of data. Correlation refers to any of a broad class of statistical relationships involving dependence....
  
  ,

20th century

• 1900 – Bachelier
  Louis Bachelier
  -External links:** Louis Bachelier webpage at the Université de Franche-Comté, Besançon / France. Text in French.** also from Index Funds Advisors, this discussion of...
  
   analyzes stock price movements as a stochastic process
  Stochastic process
  In probability theory, a stochastic process , or sometimes random process, is the counterpart to a deterministic process...
  
  ,
• 1908 – Student's t-distribution for the mean of small samples published in English (following earlier derivations in German).
• 1921 – Keynes' Treatise on Probability defends a logical interpretation of probability,
• 1928 – Tippett
  Leonard Henry Caleb Tippett
  Leonard Henry Caleb Tippett was an English physicist and statistician.Born in London, Tippett graduated in physics in the early 1920s at Imperial College. He studied for his Master of Science in statistics under Professor Karl Pearson at the Galton Laboratory, University College London and R. A....
  
   and Fisher
  Ronald Fisher
  Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher FRS was an English statistician, evolutionary biologist, eugenicist and geneticist. Among other things, Fisher is well known for his contributions to statistics by creating Fisher's exact test and Fisher's equation...
  
  's introduce extreme value theory
  Extreme value theory
  Extreme value theory is a branch of statistics dealing with the extreme deviations from the median of probability distributions. The general theory sets out to assess the type of probability distributions generated by processes...
  
  ,
• 1933 – Andrey Nikolaevich Kolmogorov publishes his book Basic notions of the calculus of probability (Grundbegriffe der Wahrscheinlichkeitsrechnung) which contains an axiomatization of probability based on measure theory,
• 1935 – R. A. Fisher
  Ronald Fisher
  Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher FRS was an English statistician, evolutionary biologist, eugenicist and geneticist. Among other things, Fisher is well known for his contributions to statistics by creating Fisher's exact test and Fisher's equation...
  
  's Design of Experiments (1st ed),
• 1937 – Neyman
  Jerzy Neyman
  Jerzy Neyman , born Jerzy Spława-Neyman, was a Polish American mathematician and statistician who spent most of his professional career at the University of California, Berkeley.-Life and career:...
  
   introduces the concept of confidence interval
  Confidence interval
  In statistics, a confidence interval is a particular kind of interval estimate of a population parameter and is used to indicate the reliability of an estimate. It is an observed interval , in principle different from sample to sample, that frequently includes the parameter of interest, if the...
  
   in statistical testing,
• 1946 – Cox's theorem
  Cox's theorem
  Cox's theorem, named after the physicist Richard Threlkeld Cox, is a derivation of the laws of probability theory from a certain set of postulates. This derivation justifies the so-called "logical" interpretation of probability. As the laws of probability derived by Cox's theorem are applicable to...
  
   derives the axioms of probability from simple logical assumptions,
• 1948 – Shannon's Mathematical Theory of Communication defines capacity of communication channels in terms of probabilities,
• 1953 – Nicholas Metropolis
  Nicholas Metropolis
  Nicholas Constantine Metropolis was a Greek American physicist.-Work:Metropolis received his B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in physics at the University of Chicago...
  
   introduces the idea of thermodynamic simulated annealing
  Simulated annealing
  Simulated annealing is a generic probabilistic metaheuristic for the global optimization problem of locating a good approximation to the global optimum of a given function in a large search space. It is often used when the search space is discrete...
  
   methods

See also

• Founders of statistics
  Founders of statistics
  Statistics is the theory and application of mathematics to the scientific method including hypothesis generation, experimental design, sampling, data collection, data summarization, estimation, prediction and inference from those results to the population from which the experimental sample was drawn...
  
  
• List of important publications in statistics
• History of probability
  History of probability
  Probability has a dual aspect: on the one hand the probability or likelihood of hypotheses given the evidence for them, and on the other hand the behavior of stochastic processes such as the throwing of dice or coins...
  
  
• History of statistics
  History of statistics
  The history of statistics can be said to start around 1749 although, over time, there have been changes to the interpretation of what the word statistics means. In early times, the meaning was restricted to information about states...