A Guide to R. A. Fisher
Ronald Fisher in 1956
The
outstanding resource is the University of Adelaide Library’s R. A.
Fisher Digital Archive. The Archive stand as a monument to the efforts of J. H. (Henry)
Bennett (1926-2015) to preserve Fisher’s legacy.
Many
articles about Fisher are available through the institutional subscription service JSTOR. Links are provided to them as well.
Information about JSTOR can be had
from http://www.jstor.org/.
Ronald Aylmer Fisher was born in London on 17th February 1890. His father was a successful fine arts auctioneer and for most of Ron’s childhood the family lived very comfortably in Hampstead. Ron showed ability at an early age. He was particularly precocious in mathematics, though his biology teacher divided for “sheer brilliance” all those he had ever taught into Fisher and the rest. Fisher went up to Caius College Cambridge graduating in 1912 with a first in mathematics. Fisher’s tutor was an astronomer and his first paper On an Absolute Criterion for Fitting Frequency Curves published while he was still a student came out of his study of the theory of errors. However Fisher’s hopes were fixed on the biometricians and he most badly wanted the absolute criterion (the future maximum likelihood) to be noticed by them. In Mendelism and Biometry, an address to an undergraduate society, Fisher envisaged a synthesis of these contesting research programmes in heredity. Fisher’s interest in heredity was combined with a commitment to eugenics; he was one of the founders of the University of Cambridge Eugenics Society—see Veronica di Mambro. This led to a friendship with Leonard Darwin, son of Charles and president of the Eugenics Education Society which published the Eugenics Review for which Fisher would write many pieces. Darwin’s support, financial, intellectual and emotional, was important to Fisher especially in the early part of his career.
After graduating Fisher had several jobs—in an actuarial office and on a farm in Canada amongst others. Poor eyesight barred him from service in the First World War. He was a schoolmaster when he published his Frequency Distribution of the Values of the Correlation Coefficient in Samples from an Indefinitely Large Population (1915) and on The Correlation between Relatives on the Supposition of Mendelian Inheritance (1918). The first established a new era in the exact theory of sampling distributions. The second vindicated Mendelism and Biometry for it showed how Karl Pearson’s biometric results could be explained by Mendelian theory.
In 1919 John Russell of Rothamsted Experimental Station hired Fisher on a temporary basis to see if a statistician could do anything with the mass of data accumulated there. Studies in Crop Variation. I (1921) was the first of a stream of papers showing what could be done. There had been some statistical work on agricultural experiments before the war involving ‘Student’ (W. S. Gosset) and Fisher’s Cambridge tutor, the astronomer F.J.M. Stratton, but Fisher raised the subject to a new level. Fisher left Rothamsted in 1933 as head of a statistics department drawing pilgrims from all over the world. There he developed the analysis of variance as well as a new approach to experimental design. His principles of randomisation, replication and blocking were presented in Statistical Methods for Research Workers (1925), The Arrangement of Field Experiments (1926) and more fully in The Design of Experiments (1935).
Fisher continued to work on
statistical and genetical theory. On
the Mathematical Foundations
of Theoretical Statistics (1922) and Theory
of Statistical Estimation (1925) advanced a new theory of estimation
in opposition to the Bayesian approach. It emphasised maximum likelihood as an
efficient way of extracting information from the data. Meanwhile Fisher was
reconstructing the theory of Pearson’s chi-squared test (On the Interpretation
of χ2 from Contingency Tables) and extending the scope of Student’s
distribution—see Applications
of "Student’s" Distribution. These developments, like the
analysis of variance, relied on a new system of distribution theory, based on
the interrelation of the normal t,
χ 2 and z (a function of the modern F) distributions. This was presented in On
a Distribution Yielding the
Error Functions of Several Well Known Statistics (1924).
The Statistical Methods for Research
Workers (1925)
instructed researchers in the methods based on this system. The book
revolutionised applied statistics, replacing the methods Pearson had introduced
at the turn of the century.
Fisher’s genetical research at Rothamsted concentrated on evolution, on integrating Mendelian theory with Darwin’s theory of natural selection. His first major theoretical paper was On the Dominance Ratio (1922). He collaborated with E. B. Ford on the analysis of selection in wild populations. His ideas on evolution were brought together in Genetical Theory of Natural Selection (1930). He argued that Mendelism with its view of particulate inheritance did not contradict Darwinism but was consistent with it. With Sewall Wright and J. B. S. Haldane, Fisher is generally recognised as one of the architects of The Modern Synthesis—on the theoretical side at least.
In 1933 Fisher succeeded Pearson as Galton Professor of Eugenics and head of the Galton Laboratory at University College, London. Fisher had much greater admiration for Francis Galton than for his disciple. Though Fisher was Pearson’s natural successor in both statistics and eugenics, he did not inherit the whole empire for a Department of Applied Statistics was split off headed by Pearson’s son, E. S. Pearson. This structure did not make for harmony and relations between Fisher and members of Pearson’s department, especially its leading theorist, Jerzy Neyman, gradually deteriorated.
In London Fisher continued to work on fiducial inference, an approach he had introduced in Inverse Probability (1930). In The Fiducial Argument (1935) he applied it to the Behrens-Fisher problem. His Two New Properties of Mathematical Likelihood (1934) showed how ancillary statistics could be used in conditional inference. On the biological side he set up a unit to study the genetics of blood groups; see Box (ch. 13). The unit, which included G. L. Taylor and R. R. Race, did important work on Rhesus blood groups. Fisher also had a breeding colony of mice.
In 1943 Fisher returned to Cambridge as professor and head of the Department of Genetics. His Theory of Inbreeding provided a theoretical analysis of the mouse experiments he had been conducting since his London days. Fisher was profoundly unsympathetic to the mathematical statistics that Neyman and Wald were developing in the United States. His Statistical Methods and Scientific Inference (1956) criticised those developments and gave a theoretical defence of his own practice. In 1958 Fisher challenged Austin Bradford Hill’s inference from the association between smoking and lung cancer that the former was an important cause of the latter; see Smoking. The Cancer Controversy. He retired officially from Cambridge in 1957 but stayed until 1959. He spent the last three years of his life in Adelaide as a Research Fellow at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO). His contacts in Adelaide were J. H. Bennett and E. J. Cornish. Fisher died in Adelaide on July 29th 1962 and his ashes lie there in St. Peter’s Cathedral.
Fisher received plenty of recognition. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1929 (certificate of election), awarded its Royal Medal in 1938, Darwin Medal in 1948 and Copley Medal in 1955; he was knighted in 1952. Fisher inspired and gave warmth and loyalty but intellectual differences often generated personal enmities. The most enduring of these was with Karl Pearson; this had the result that after 1915 the leading statistician never published in the leading statistics journal, Pearson’s Biometrika. Later there were quarrels with Neyman and Wright.
Main sources: Box , Savage (a brilliant review of Fisher’s statistical work) and
Yates, F. & K. Mather (1963) Ronald Aylmer Fisher 1890-1962, Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, 9, 91-120.
Pictures
St
Andrews Portraits
of Statisticians Portrait
at Gonville & Caius. Memorial window. Fisher’s
childhood home. Lloyd
Allison’s pictures of Fisher and of St. Peter’s Cathedral. Royal Society
portraits here
and here.
The 50th anniversary of Fisher’s death in 2012 has been commemorated by a conference at the Royal Statistical Society. See here for the programme.
_______________________________________________________
A full bibliography of Fisher’s writings is available from Adelaide. This is an extended version of the bibliography in volume 1 of the Collected Papers.
Fisher’s
published six books and all went into more than one edition. Five appeared in
posthumous editions incorporating alterations he had planned. Only the Genetical Theory exists in a variorum
edition.
·
Statistical Methods for Research
Workers, 14 editions,
1925 /28 /30 /32 /34 /36 /38 /41 /44 / 46 /50 /54 /58 / 70, Edinburgh: Oliver
& Boyd. From the 1948 reprint of the 10th edition the book was
also published in New York: by Hafner. There were translations into French,
German, Italian, Spanish, and Japanese at least.
This
was Fisher’s most influential statistics book. It is essentially a book of
significance test recipes. Behind the recipes was the system of sampling
distributions based on the normal distribution. Fisher’s ideas on randomisation
in experiments were first presented here, as well as his reconstruction of
regression theory. New editions with extra recipes appeared every few years—the first edition had 239 pages,
the last 362 more densely filled pages. While new sections were interpolated
the basic structure remained unchanged and old material that had been
important, such as the intra-class correlation, was never retired. Some old
material was rewritten in the light of new developments, e.g. the text had to
accommodate the introduction of the fiducial argument in 1930. To see how the
paragraphs on probability and likelihood in the first chapter were rewritten
see Likelihood & Probability and follow the trail of red ink.
In 1951 an issue of JASA celebrated
the book’s silver jubilee. The first edition
is available on Christopher Green’s Classics in the History of Psychology website. Six reviews of the 1st edition are
known and are available on the web—by Student,
E.
S. Pearson (who also reviewed the 2nd edition), Harold
Hotelling (who reviewed the first 7 editions!) and Isserlis
as well as unsigned reviews in Nature
and the BMJ.
Edwards
describes the first edition and how it was received.
·
The Genetical Theory of Natural
Selection, 3
editions 1930 /58 /99. Oxford University Press (1930), Dover (1958), Oxford
University Press (1999).
W. D. Hamilton
rated this book as “second in importance in evolution theory to Darwin’s Origin”. It launched the “fundamental
theorem of natural selection” the subject of much later debate. The reviews are
reviewed in Bennett
Natural Selection (pp. 35ff).
Only two reviews are currently available on JSTOR:
both emphasise the chapters on human populations—N. M. Grier in Social Forces Dec (1930) JSTOR
and A. B. Hill in JRSS No. 1
(1931) JSTOR.
Fisher prepared a second edition (1958) but the revisions were not carefully
done. J.
H. Bennett has edited a complete variorum edition
(1999) with numerous additional documents.
For
more information see B.
D. Neville’s review
·
The Design of Experiments, 8 editions, 1935 /37 /42 /47 /49 /51
/60 /66, Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd. From 5th edition also
published New York: Hafner
This work expounded the principles of experimental design Fisher had been developing since the mid 20s. It was essentially an ideas book and much of the associated statistical analysis was presented in Statistical Methods for Research Workers. Over the years Fisher added some sub-sections and changed some of the text but the final edition of the book is not very different from the first. The first edition was reviewed by S. V. Eaton Botanical Gazette, 97, (Dec., 1935), 426-427 JSTOR, Harold Hotelling Journal of the American Statistical Association, 30, (Dec., 1935), 771-772 JSTOR and C. C. Craig American Mathematical Monthly, 43, (Mar., 1936), 180-181 JSTOR.
·
Statistical Tables for Biological
Agricultural and Medical Research
(with F. Yates), 6 editions, 1938 /43 /49 /53 /57 /63, Edinburgh: Oliver &
Boyd. From 3rd edition also published New York: Hafner.
The basic tables were provided in Statistical Methods for Research Workers with instruction in how to use them. Those presented here were much more extensive—more distributions were covered and individual tables were less abbreviated and successive editions brought in extra tables. The tables are prefaced by an Introduction describing their use. Yates recalled the origins of the book in his foreword to the 1990 compendium: “By the mid-1930s it became increasingly obvious that a book of tables, containing properly bound copies of those included in Statistical Methods, would be of great benefit to practical workers. When I first suggested this Fisher was averse to it, but eventually he changed his mind. I then discovered, somewhat to my surprise, that he had indeed been thinking about this for some time.” The sixth (posthumous) edition is available from Adelaide here. M. G. Kendall ends his review of the first edition with, “The book will be indispensable to users of the newer methods in statistics.” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 102, (1939), p. 298 JSTOR.
·
Theory of Inbreeding, 2 editions, 1949 /65, Edinburgh:
Oliver & Boyd. 2nd edition also published New York: Academic
Press.
A theoretical investigation of certain aspects of inbreeding and a presentation of the theory of junctions. Although the topic has both practical and theoretical interest and the opening chapter makes an interesting link with Darwin, this book has none of the general interest of the Genetical Theory of Natural Selection. There is a review by M. S. Bartlett JRSSA, 113, No. 2. (1950), 249-250 JSTOR
·
Statistical Methods and Scientific
Inference, 3
editions, 1956/59/74, Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd. Also published New York
Hafner.
This was Fisher’s only unified account of the principles underlying his approach to statistical inference—significance tests, likelihood and fiducial inference. It takes the form of a review of statistical inference since Bayes. As he had been doing since the 20s, Fisher criticised the Bayesian approach but he also criticised Neyman and Wald. Some of the points against them are made in his 1955 JRSSB article “Statistical Methods and Scientific Induction” JSTOR. Some new material was added in later editions. The first edition was reviewed by N. T. J. Bailey JRSSA, 120, No. 1. (1957), 88-89 JSTOR , G. H. Jowett Applied Statistics, 6, No. 3, (1957), 226-227 JSTOR, M. S. Bartlett Biometrika, 44, (1957), 293-295, JSTOR, E. J. G. Pitman, Journal of the American Statistical Association, 52, No. 79, (1957), 322-330, JSTOR. E. H. Hutten British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 9, No. 33, (1958), 43-51, JSTOR. The review by D. V. Lindley in Heredity, 11, (1957), 280-2 angered Fisher; see the letter to Barnard on p. 36 of Statistical Inference & Analysis. In his obituary (p. 6) Maurice Kendall said he wished that Fisher had never written the book—or the smoking pamphlet.
Not a book but a pamphlet of 47 pages, reprinting the pieces Fisher had written on the topic. Apart from the additional note ‘Inhaling’ these are reproduced in the Collected Papers. The volume was reviewed by C. C. Spicer JRSSA, 122, No. 4. (1959), 554-556, JSTOR.
·
Statistical Methods, Experimental Design and Scientific Inference,
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.
A
compilation edited by J. H. Bennett containing the posthumous editions of Statistical Methods for Research Workers,
Design of Experiments and Statistical Methods and Scientific Inference
as published by Hafner with
a foreword by F. Yates.
The standard edition of Fisher’s papers is
J. H. Bennett (1971/4) Collected Papers of R. A. Fisher 5 volumes, Adelaide: Adelaide University Press.
This has 294 items but even so it lacks most of Fisher’s book reviews and some of his published contributions to discussions. Sets can be purchased from the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science, University of Waterloo.
Fisher made a selection of his statistical
papers—and wrote notes on them—for the volume
These notes are included in the Bennett edition and in the digitalised version from Adelaide. The Shewhart volume was reviewed by E. S. Pearson Biometrika, 38, No. 1/2 (Jun., 1951), 257-259, JSTOR and W. E. Deming Science, 113, (Feb. 23, 1951), 216-217, JSTOR.
Web
access
· Many of the articles are available from Adelaide and there are links to several of these in this guide. All of the articles, except for Fisher’s review of Keynes’s Treatise on Probability, (CP32A in the list) had previously appeared in the Collected Papers.
Although
many of Fisher’s articles are available on the web, that does not make them
easy to read—technical literature written between forty and ninety years ago
seldom is. (Of the papers mentioned in the biographical
sketch the most approachable is
probably The
Arrangement of Field Experiments.)
i) Fisher wrote many non-technical pieces. For the Eugenics Review he wrote expositions of his genetic papers as well as pieces on eugenics proper. In later years he wrote many perspective pieces. Here are some examples.
· Some Hopes of a Eugenist. Eugenics Review, 5: 309-315 (1914)
· The Causes of Human Variability. Eugenics Review, 10: 213-220. (1918)
· Darwinian Evolution by Mutations. Eugenics Review, 14: 31-34 (1922)
· The Biometrical Study of Heredity. Eugenics Review, 16: 189-210. (1924)
·
The Bearing
of Genetics on Theories of
Evolution. Science
Progress, 27: 273-287 (1932)
·
The
Contributions of Rothamsted to the Development of the Science of Statistics. Annual
Report Rothamsted Experimental Station, 1933, p. 43-50.
·
Uncertain
Inference. Proceedings of the
American Academy of Arts and Science, 71:
245-258 (1936)
·
Has Mendel’s
Work been Rediscovered? Annals of Science, 1, 115-137, (1936)
· The Rhesus Factor : A Study in Scientific Method. American Scientist, 35: 95-103 (1947)
· Statistics. In Scientific Thought in the Twentieth Century, (ed. A.E. Heath), pp. 31-55. London : Watts, 1951.
·
Natural Selection
from the Genetical Standpoint. Australian Journal of Science, 22: 16-17 (1959)
In these expositions Fisher did not just re-hash old material, thus Uncertain Inference contains the first statement of the problem of the Nile.
ii) His technical writings seem unnecessarily difficult because important steps in the argument are often left out. His main books are almost desperately non-technical but this only perplexes the reader who tries to reconstruct the underlying mathematical argument. Thus some of his publications have been reprinted with aids for the reader.
The
fundamental 1918 population genetics paper is reprinted with a detailed
analysis in
P. A. P. Moran and
C. A. B. Smith (1966) Commentary on R. A. Fisher’s Paper 'The Correlation
between Relatives on the Supposition of Mendelian Inheritance’. Eugenics Laboratory Memoirs XLI,
Galton Laboratory, University College London. Reviewed by K. Mather Population Studies, 20, (1967), 372-3 JSTOR and C. C. Li Quarterly Review of Biology, 42, (1967), 425-426 JSTOR.
Two anthologies of statistical classics reproduce some of Fisher’s writing. These have introductions and bibliographies.
·
S.
Kotz & N. L. Johnson (1992) Breakthroughs in Statistics Volumes 1 &
2, New York, Springer.
In
volume 1, S. M. Geisser discusses (part of) “Mathematical Foundations of
Theoretical Statistics” (1922), the great programmatic work on statistical
theory. In volume 2, T. Speed discusses “The Arrangement of Field Experiments”
(1926) and S. C. Pearce discusses an extract from Statistical Methods for Research Workers (1925) dealing with the
analysis of variance.
·
H.
A. David & A. W. F. Edwards (2001) Annotated Readings in the History of
Statistics, New York: Springer.
Edwards
discusses “Inverse Probability”, the first presentation of the fiducial
argument.
Fisher’s
correspondence & manuscripts
·
Fisher’s
papers are in the Barr-Smith
Library of the University of Adelaide. (See also Nancy Hall.)
Fisher carried on an extensive correspondence from
the late 1920s and letters make up the bulk of the collection, although there
are some unpublished manuscripts and notes. From the list
of correspondents it seems Fisher corresponded with virtually everybody.
Note that much of the material is now available online. The letters in Adelaide
formed the basis of the two volumes of published correspondence edited by J. H.
Bennett. See below.
·
Adelaide
has also issued a file of miscellaneous
notes and a list of the contents
of Fisher’s library.
·
University
College London (UCL)
has correspondence with Gosset and Karl Pearson.
·
The
National
Register of Archives lists some further holdings in the UK
·
There
are letters in the Hotelling papers at Columbia
University
·
The
American Philosophical Society
Library has extensive holdings of the papers of American scientists. For
Fisher the most significant collection is the Sewall Wright Papers
but there is Fisher material in other collections: Milislav
Demerec Papers L. C. Dunn Papers Raymond Pearl Papers
Bronson
Price Papers. The entries have useful biographical information on their
subjects. The APS also have the papers of John Tukey but these are not
yet catalogued.
Presumably
more material will become available as the papers of those who corresponded
with Fisher pass into library collections.
Published correspondence
Much
valuable material has been published with useful notes by various editors.
·
E.
S. Pearson (1968) Some Early Correspondence between W. S.
Gosset, R. A. Fisher and Karl Pearson, with Notes and Comments, Biometrika, 55, 445-457. JSTOR
These
letters (originals
in UCL) are to or from or about Fisher in his earliest days as a statistician.
·
Letters from W. S. Gosset to R. A.
Fisher 1915-1936:
Summaries by R. A. Fisher with a Foreword by L. McMullen, printed by Arthur
Guinness for private circulation and placed in a few libraries.
For
Fisher’s statistical work up to the mid-30s the correspondence with Gosset
(Student) is the most useful source (The originals
are in UCL). There is no editorial apparatus. The second edition of 1970 has a
few letters not in the first of 1962. The letters are best read in conjunction
with the biographies by Box
and E. S. Pearson.
This selection is valuable for
Fisher’s genetics in the period 1915-1938: Bennett’s introduction is an
excellent guide to this side of Fisher’s work.
The correspondence with Darwin reveals more of Fisher’s feelings
than the cordial but more professional correspondence with Gosset. This volume,
based on Adelaide material, is also useful for Fisher’s relations with Sewall
Wright and J. B. S. Haldane. Fisher’s undergraduate paper on Mendelism and Biometry is included.
There are reviews by D. J. Finney Biometrics,
40, (Dec.,
1984), p. 1209 JSTOR, Garland E. Allen Isis, 77, (Mar., 1986), pp. 168-169 JSTOR and A. W. F. Edwards Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, A, 150, (1987), pp. 168-169 JSTOR.
·
J.
H. Bennett (1990) (ed) Statistical Inference and Analysis: Selected Correspondence of R. A.
Fisher, Oxford, University Press.
This is based on material in Adelaide and relates to Fisher’s statistical work after 1930. The volume is a selection: many of Fisher’s correspondents are not here and not all of the letters of the correspondents who are here are included. The volume includes correspondence with the statisticians mentioned below as well as with Darmois, Fraser, Fréchet, Savage and Tukey. There are interesting comments on the book and on Fisher in
G. A. Barnard
(1992) Review of Statistical
Inference and Analysis: Selected Correspondence of R. A. Fisher (edited by J. H. Bennett). Statistical Science, 7, 5-12. JSTOR
A. P. Dempster (1991) Fisher’s
Letters: Statistical Inference and
Analysis. Selected Correspondence of R. A. Fisher. by R. A. Fisher; J. H.
Bennett, Science New Series, 252, No. 5002, 143-144. JSTOR
A. W. F. Edwards (1991) Statistical Inference and Analysis: Selected
Correspondence of R. A. Fisher. by J. H. Bennett, Biometrics, 47, 199-1200.
JSTOR
A. W. Kemp (1993) Statistical Inference and Analysis: Selected Correspondence of R. A. Fisher. by R. A. Fisher; J. H. Bennett, The Statistician , 42, 75-76. JSTOR
_______________________________________________________
Writing about Fisher is not a well-defined category.
Fisher was such an important figure that to write about his subjects was
inevitably to write about his ideas. Modern work on the analysis of variance usually makes no direct reference to him
but in the 1930s it was Fisher’s
analysis of variance. Writing on other Fisher topics—particularly controversial
ones like fiducial inference, the Behrens-Fisher problem or the fundamental
theorem of natural selection—can be as much about Fisher as anything with his
name in the title.
The
hundreds of references below illustrate
different ways of approaching Fisher. The grouping of items is rough and
unsystematic; there is no category of articles
taking off from Fisher as that would have produced thousands of references.
The electronic format makes it easy for you to make your own specialised list:
to make one on, say, the fiducial argument start by searching on fiducial.
There
is the fine full-scale biography by
Fisher’s daughter.
·
Joan
Fisher Box (1978) R. A. Fisher: The Life
of a Scientist, New York: Wiley. Preface
This covers both Fisher’s
scientific career and his personal life. Many of those who worked with Fisher were
still alive and the book makes excellent use of their recollections. The book
conveys very well how Fisher saw his controversies but it is worth consulting
treatments from the other side: see Fisher’s significant others.
Kruskal’s review essay provides additional perspective
W. Kruskal
(1980) The Significance of Fisher: A Review of R. A. Fisher: The Life of a Scientist by Joan Fisher Box, Journal of the American Statistical
Association, 75, 1019-1030. JSTOR
There are less detailed reviews by Rao Mathematical Reviews, Yates Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, A, 142, (1979), 504-506 JSTOR, Finney Biometrics, 35, (1979), 357-358 JSTOR, Dempster Science, 203, No. 4380. (Feb. 9, 1979), p. 537, JSTOR, Kanji Statistician, 30, (1981), 157-158 JSTOR, Calder Statistician, 36, (1987), 60-62 JSTOR. Porter Journal of Heredity, 28, (1987), 215 here. The article “Science and Statistics” by G.E.P. Box (Joan’s husband) is an interesting companion piece to the biography.
There
is a useful overview of Fisher’s statistical work
·
S.
E. Fienberg & D. V. Hinkley (1980) (eds) R. A. Fisher: An Appreciation, New York, Springer.
This
contains essays on the individual fields to which Fisher contributed. The
individual essays appear below and can be found by searching for Fienberg.
There is a detailed review by Oscar Kempthorne Journal of the American Statistical Association, 78,
(1983), 482-490 JSTOR. This is not only an account of the
book but a record of Kempthorne’s feelings about Fisher. There is a note by Seneta in Mathematical
Reviews.
Recently
three mini-symposia on Fisher have appeared. The Statistician
articles were associated with the blue
plaque occasion of 2002 and survey Fisher’s main activities. The IJE
articles focus on smoking; see below for other articles on this theme.
The “Mendel-Fisher controversy” began with Fisher’s 1936 paper Has Mendel’s work been rediscovered?; see below for other
articles on this theme.
·
S.
Senn, P. J. Green, M. J. R. Healy, A. W. F. Edwards, A. Grafen
(2003) A Blue Plaque for Fisher, Statistician (Journal of the Royal
Statistical Society, Series D), 52 (3), 297-330.
·
P. Armitage,
W. Bodmer, I. Chalmers, R. Doll, H. Marks
(2003) International Journal of Epidemiology, 32, (6),
922-948.
·
A.
Franklin, A. W. F. Edwards, D. J. Fairbanks, D. L. Hartl, T. Seidenfeld (2008) Ending the Mendel-Fisher Controversy,
University of Pittsburgh Press.
.
Obituaries, memorials and
reminiscences
Ronald
Fisher has been remembered in publications ranging from The Caian, his college magazine, to the Dictionary of National Biography. The list here is arranged
chronologically. 1962-7 was the time for obituaries and appreciations and 1990
was the Fisher centenary. There were no obituaries in the main genetics
journals as they do not seem to have published obituaries at the time of
Fisher’s death. Except for Yates &
Mather the links are to JSTOR.
The
Times, London,
Tuesday 31 July 1962. Anonymous, but said to be by V.B. Wigglesworth. Followed
some days later by supplementary material by G.A. Barnard, Sir John Russell and
C. I. Bliss. Available
from St Andrews.
Sir Ronald
Aylmer Fisher, 1890-1962 (in Obituary) Journal
of the Royal Statistical Society. A, (1962), 125, 668. JSTOR
A. R. G. Owen (1962) An Appreciation of the Life and Work of Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher F.R.S., F.S.S. Sc.D., Statistician, 12, 313-319. JSTOR
W. J. Youden
(1962) Memorial to Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher: 1890-1962, Journal of the American Statistical Association, 57, 727-728. JSTOR
C. D. Darlington and J. A. Fraser
Roberts (1962) Sir Ronald Fisher, F.R.S., F.S.S. Eugenics Review, 54
, (3), 120-122.
F.
Yates (1962) Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher (1890-1962) Revue de l’Institut
International de Statisitique, 30, (2), 280-282.
M. Fréchet (1963) Letter to the President of
the Royal Statistical Society, Journal of the Royal Statistical
Society. Series A,
126, 169-170. (part of the following
entry)
J. O. Irwin, G. A. Barnard, K. Mather, F.
Yates, & M. J. R. Healy (1963) Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher, 1890-1962, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society.
Series A, 126, 159-178. JSTOR
M. G. Kendall (1963) Ronald Aylmer Fisher, 1890-1962, Biometrika, 50, 1-15. JSTOR,
F. Yates & K. Mather (1963) Ronald
Aylmer Fisher 1890-1962, Biographical
Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, 9, 91-120.
J. Neyman. (1967) R. A. Fisher (1890-1962): An Appreciation,
Science, 156, 1456-1460. JSTOR
W. G. Cochran
(1967) Footnote [To Neyman 1967], Science,
156, 1460-1462. JSTOR
F. Yates (1981) Fisher, Sir Ronald
Aylmer, The Dictionary of National
Biography, 1961-70, ed. E. T. Williams and C. S. Nicholls, pp. 361-362,
Oxford University Press.
L. L. Cavalli-Sforza (1990)
Recollections of Whittingehame Lodge. Theoretical
Population Biology, 38, 301-305.
C. Clarke (1990) Professor Sir Ronald Fisher, F.R.S. British Medical Journal, 301, 1446-1448.
A. W. F. Edwards (1990) Commemorative windows in Hall for John Venn and R. A. Fisher. The Caian, November 1990, Cambridge: Gonville and Caius College, 67-68.
A. W. F. Edwards (1990) R. A. Fisher, 1890-1962. XV International Biometric Conference, Budapest, 2-6 July 1990; Proceedings of Invited Papers, 3-6.
C. B. Goodhart (1990) Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher, Sc.D., F.R.S. The Caian, November 1990, Cambridge: Gonville and Caius College, 68-73.
J. C. Gower (1990/1) Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher 1890-1962, Mathematical Spectrum, 23, 76-86.
Of course many of those who knew Fisher have left more informal recollections, e.g., the cosmologist Fred Hoyle in Fisher quotations (the last one) and the mathematician Christopher Zeeman in The Linnean, 22, (2006), 10-11 recall conversations with him. There are more recollections in Nathan Keyfitz (2010) Fisher and Friends, Significance, 7, (4), 185.
Encyclopedia
articles give brief surveys of Fisher and his work. They can also provide
linked articles on people and/or topics associated with Fisher: in Statistics
Karl Pearson, W. S. Gosset, J. Neyman, etc) and analysis of variance, fiducial
inference, design of experiments, likelihood, chi-squared, information,
sufficiency, ancillarity etc; in genetics/evolutionary biology Pearson, W.
Bateson, Sewall Wright, J. B. S. Haldane E. B. Ford and evolution, natural
selection, modern synthesis, sex ratio, … For statistics the Encyclopedia of Biostatistics and Statisticians
of the Centuries have
the fullest links and for biology the Encyclopedia
of Life Sciences; this last has many articles on Fisher topics and Fisher
people e.g. evolution, the sex-ratio, E. B. Ford, Karl Pearson and Sewall
Wright
M. Ruse (2006) Fisher, Ronald Aylmer. Encyclopedia of Life Sciences, Wiley available to subscribing institutions at http://www.els.net/
N. S. Hall (2004) Fisher, Sir Ronald. Encyclopedia of Social Measurement (ed. K. Kempf-Leonard) 39-. New York: Elsevier
A. W. F. Edwards (2002) Fisher, R.
A. Encyclopedia of Genetics. New
York: Academic Press.
S. L. Zabell (2001) Ronald Aylmer Fisher. Statisticians of the Centuries (ed. C. C. Heyde and E. Seneta) pp. 389-397. New York: Springer.
A. W. F. Edwards (2001) Darwin and Mendel united: the contributions of Fisher, Haldane and Wright up to 1932. Encyclopedia of Genetics. London: Fitzroy Dearborn.
A. W. F. Edwards (2001) Ronald A. Fisher. International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioural Sciences. Kidlington, Oxford: Pergamon.
J. F. Box & A. W. F. Edwards
(1998) Fisher, Ronald Aylmer. Encyclopedia
of Biostatistics 2, 1523-1529.
Chichester: Wiley.
J. F. Box (1997) Fisher, Ronald
Aylmer, Leading Personalities in
Statistical Sciences from the Seventeenth Century to the Present, 99-108.
New York: Wiley.
A. W. F. Edwards (1987) Fisher, Ronald Aylmer. The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics, London : Macmillan, Volume II, 376-377.
J. F. Box (1982) Fisher, Ronald
Aylmer, Encyclopedia of Statistical
Science, 3, 103-111. New York:
Wiley.
M. S. Bartlett (1978) Fisher, R.
A., International Encyclopedia of
Statistics, 1, 352-358. New
York: Free Press.
N. T. Gridgeman (1972) Fisher, R.
A., Dictionary of Scientific Biography,
5, 7-11.
_____________________________________________________
Fisher’s
work is discussed in histories of the various fields to which he contributed.
See the following.
·
A.
Hald (1998) A History of Mathematical
Statistics from 1750 to 1930. New York: Wiley.
This is a detailed technical history.
Despite the title it extends beyond 1930 to cover most of Fisher’s work.
·
A.
Hald (2007) A History of Parametric
Statistical Inference from Bernoulli to Fisher, 1713-1935. New York:
Springer.
This is essentially a second
edition of part of Hald’s 1998 book.
·
J. Aldrich (2016) The Origins of Modern
Statistics: the English Statistical School in The Oxford Handbook of Probability and Philosophy ed. Alan Hájek
and Christopher Hitchcock
A sketch of the
Galton-Pearson-Fisher development.
·
G.
Gigerenzer, Z. Switjink, T. Porter, L. Daston & L. Kruger (1989) The Empire of Chance, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Fisher is a major twentieth century
presence in this general history of probability and statistics.
·
J.
W. Tankard (1984) The Statistical Pioneers, Cambridge, MA: Schenkman.
Essentially a collection of
biographies with a chapter on Fisher.
·
H. O. Lancaster (1969) The Chi-squared Distribution, New York: Wiley.
A historically informed monograph
on a subject to which Fisher made important contributions.
·
D.
A. MacKenzie (1981) Statistics in Britain
1865-1930: the Social Construction of Scientific Knowledge, Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press.
A sociology of science perspective
on Statistics, Genetics and Eugenics with a chapter on Fisher’s work.
·
W.
B. Provine (1971) The Origins
of Theoretical Population Genetics. University of Chicago Press.
·
E. Mayr (1982) The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution and Inheritance,
Cambridge MA.,
Bellknap Press.
Mayr did not appreciate Fisher
and this book of nearly 1000 pages devotes only a page or so to him.
· Garland E. Allen (1988) Bibliographic Essays: Life Sciences in the Twentieth Century.
There are several essays on Fisher;
they appear below and can be found by searching on Sarkar.
·
J.
Gayon (1998) Darwinism’s Struggle for Survival: Heredity and the Hypothesis
of Natural Selection, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
An account of evolutionary
theory from Darwin to the Modern Synthesis. There is a review by Michael R. Rose (2001)
Once More with
Feeling. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 14 (3), 519-519.
·
Stephen
Jay Gould (2002) The Structure of
Evolutionary Theory, Cambridge MA.: Belknap Press.
This is a personal interpretation of the present-day state of the subject but it contains plenty of history.
This history of the British
Eugenics movement has a chapter on Fisher.
Russell brought Fisher to Rothamsted. His book emphasises the role of Rothamsted in the development of agricultural science in Britain. Russell himself is the subject of
H. G. Thornton (1966) Sir Edward John Russell, Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, 12, 457-477.
·
J.
C. Gower, J. C. (1988) Statistics and Agriculture, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, A, 151, 179-200. JSTOR
A survey of the British scene from the end of the 18th
century.
·
Anthony
C. Atkinson & R. A. Bailey (2001) One Hundred Years of the Design of
Experiments On and Off the Pages of Biometrika, Biometrika, 88,
53-97.
Because Fisher boycotted Biometrika
after 1918 (biographical
sketch) his
presence in this history is strictly “off the page”. See
J. Aldrich (2013) Karl Pearson's
Biometrika: 1901-36, Biometrika, 100, (1), 2-15.
Many
of the technical terms in modern
Statistics came from Fisher. See
·
David,
H. A. First (?) Occurrence of Common Terms in Statistics and Probability, Appendix
B and pp. 219-228 of H. A. David & A. W. F. Edwards (ed) (2001) Annotated Readings in the History of
Statistics, Springer New York.
·
Or search for Fisher in Jeff Miller’s Earliest known uses of some of
the words of mathematics and Earliest
uses of symbols in probability and statistics pages. Many of the entries
have links to the papers where Fisher first used the terms.
·
There
is an account of how Fisher transformed Karl Pearson’s statistical language in
J. Aldrich (2003) The Language of
the English Biometric School, International Statistical Review, 71,
109-131.
_____________________________________________________
Fisher in textbooks
Modern statistics textbooks refer to the “Fisher exact test”, “Fisher information”, etc. but they rarely indicate the depth and breadth of his contribution. Some contributions were so fundamental that they are invisible and not attributed to him or indeed to anybody.
Methods of Correlation Analysis by US Department of Agriculture statistician Mordecai Ezekiel was perhaps the first textbook to give prominence to Fisher’s ideas. Henry Daniels recalled of teaching at Cambridge, “When I was learning statistics from John Wishart in the mid-thirties there were two recommended textbooks: Fisher’s Statistical Methods, which one read with respect, and Tippett’s Methods of Statistics, which provided understanding.” Snedecor’s textbook was widely used in the US while Mather’s carried an endorsement from Fisher.
·
M.
Ezekiel (1930) Methods of Correlation Analysis, Wiley: New York.
·
L. H. C. Tippett (1931) The Methods of Statistics. An Introduction mainly
for Workers in the Biological Sciences, London: Williams & Norgate.
·
George W. Snedecor (1937) Statistical Methods
Applied to Experiments in Agriculture and Biology, Ames, Iowa: Collegiate Press.
·
K.
Mather (1943) Statistical Analysis in Biology, London: Methuen.
Cramér’s
synthesis puts Fisher’s
contribution alongside that of others and so provides some perspective on it
·
H.
Cramér (1946) Mathematical Methods of
Statistics, Princeton University Press, London.
There
are frequent references to Fisher’s ideas on inference in
D. R. Cox & D. V. Hinkley
(1974) Theoretical Statistics,
London: Chapman & Hall.
In biology Fisher does figure in some modern textbooks
_____________________________________________________
Fisher was involved with other scientists in a variety of
ways. Of course the categories are not mutually exclusive, though there do not
seem to have been cases of co-authors and students becoming enemies.
See Box for information on many of these and their work with Fisher. There are additional references below. Russell’s history is useful for Fisher’s Rothamsted collaborators. An early Rothamsted collaborator was H. G. Thornton, the chief bacteriologist
P.S
Nutman. (1977) Sir Henry Gerard
Thornton, Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal
Society, 23, 557-574.
·
Voluntary workers at
Rothamsted: E. Somerfield (1923), L. H. C. Tippett (1923-5), J. E. James
(1926), T. N. Hoblyn (1925-6), B. Balmakund
(1927-8), A. J. Page (1927-8), D. W. Boehme (1928), W. H. Beckett (1928), J. B.
Hutchison (1928), H. Hotelling (1928), H. G. Sanders (1929), B. P. Scattergood
(1929), J. Pepper (1929), G. W. Nye (1929),
W. G. Eggleton (1929), R. J. Kallamkar (1920-32), F. E. Allan (1929-30), H. W. Jack
(1929), J. W. Hopkins (1930-2), C. H. N.
Jackson (1930). E. Anderson (1930), H.
C. Arnold (1930), A. de Oliveira Franco (1930), B. Christidis
(1930), C. H. Goulden (1930), A. W. R. Joachim
(1930), A. L. Murray (1930-1), F. R. Immer (1930-1),
R. F. Summerby (1931), S. H. Justensen
(1931), H. R. Hoskins (1931), J. T. Campbell (1931), F. Bilington
(1931), H. B Bescoby (1931), H.J. Buchanan-Wollaston
(1931), T. Eden (1932), H. B. Bescoby (1932), S. A. Stouffer (1932), R. O. Illiffe (1932),
R. S. Koshal (1932-3), I. Bacher (1932), P. E. Turner
(1932), J. Rasmussen (1932), C. Stuart Christian (1932-3), R. K. S. Murray
(1932), R. A. Taylor (1932), A. Bigot (1933), R. A. Scott (1933), S. S. Wilks
(1933), H. L. G. Milne (1933), J. B. Hutchison (1928, 1933), A. P. Malan
(1933), I. Zacopanay (1933-4), A. V. Coombs (1933-4).
From Parolini (2015).
·
Enemies In his obituary piece in The Times
Barnard wrote “his devotion to scientific truth being literally passionate, he
was an implacable enemy of those whom who judged guilty of propagating error.”
There were serious breaches with Karl Pearson,
Sewall Wright and Jerzy Neyman amongst others. See below.
· Friends. From Barnard in The Times again,“He was capable of tremendous charm and warmth in friendship.” One important friendship outside of the usual colleague/student pattern was that with Mahalanobis. Their relationship was like that between friendly potentates. P. C. Mahalonobis (1893-1972) was a physicist turned statistician who set up the Indian Statistical Institute in 1931. He and Fisher made contact in the 1920s and Fisher became an important ally in establishing Statistics in India. Their friendship is discussed by Box and also by
A. Rudra (1996) Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis: A Biography, Oxford University Press, Delhi.
P. C. Mahalanobis (1964) Some
Personal Memories of R. A. Fisher,
Biometrics, 20, 368-371. JSTOR
S. M. Stigler (2018) Mahalanobis
& Fisher: Mathematical Statistics as a Global Enterprise,Sankhya B, 1-12.
Some relationships were of such importance in the history of 20th century Statistics and Genetics and/or in Fisher’s life that they have their own literatures. The relationship with Leonard Darwin was an important personal relationship. The relationships with the others reflect Fisher’s changing position, as he got older and his authority increased. Pearson and Gosset were his significant seniors, Wright was a contemporary while Fisher was the significant senior for Neyman and Jeffreys.
Someone who belongs here is E. S. Pearson. However, Fisher saw Egon Pearson as a proxy, first for his father, Karl Pearson, and then for his collaborator Jerzy Neyman. Some of the material under Neyman is useful for Fisher’s relations with ESP but the best source is Pearson’s biography of Student. The reviews Pearson wrote of the first two editions of Fisher’s Statistical Methods for Research Workers drew replies from Fisher.
Fisher
and Karl Pearson see biographical
sketch
In 1912 Karl Pearson (1857-1936) St Andrews dominated Statistics and Biometry but by the end of the 20s Fisher had replaced him as the leader in both subjects. On Fisher’s death Fréchet wrote, “Les statisticiens du monde entier savent quelle dette ils doivent à l’école statistique brittanique, et en particulier, aux deux grands savants, qui ont, l’un créé, l’autre transformé le statistique mathématique, Karl Pearson et Sir Ronald Fisher” (1963). However, it is clear from Fisher’s Statistics and his Statistical Methods and Scientific Inference that Pearson was no “grand savant” for him.
Personal relations between the men began to be cold from 1917, when Fisher felt Pearson had treated him badly, and Fisher was still expressing bitterness twenty years after Pearson’s death. Fisher’s contempt for Pearson found expression in some unlikely ways, e.g. in his celebration of the work of Pearson’s contemporary W. F. Sheppard. The rift occurred at a critical point in Fisher's career but it was less vital for Pearson and there is more on the relationship in Box than in either of the Pearson biographies. E. S. Pearson was reticent on the relationship, because the events were too recent and the people too close, and, though Porter has some discussion, he is more interested in earlier formative events in his subject’s life.
Egon S. Pearson (1936/8) Karl Pearson: An Appreciation of Some Aspects of his Life and Work, In Two Parts, Biometrika, 28, 193-257, 29, 161-247. JSTOR, JSTOR (Published as a book by Cambridge University Press, in 1938.)
Theodore M. Porter (2004) Karl Pearson: the Scientific Life in a
Statistical Age. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press
Pearson (1968)
contains important documents and a valuable commentary. Other general discussions include:
A. W. F. Edwards (1994) R. A.
Fisher on Karl Pearson, Notes and Records
of the Royal Society of London, 48, 97-106. JSTOR
S. Sarkar (1995) J. B. S. Haldane
and R. A. Fisher’s Draft Life of Karl Pearson, Notes and Records of the Royal
Society of London, 49,119-124. JSTOR
Fisher’s
letters to Pearson from 1933 to -35 are available on the Adelaide correspondence
site.
There were many points at issue between Fisher and Pearson. On the genetic side see Provine and
B. Norton and Pearson, E.
S. (1976) A Note on the Background to and Refereeing of R. A.
Fisher’s 1918 Paper 'The Correlation between Relatives on the Supposition of
Mendelian inheritance’. Notes &
Records of the Royal Society of London, 31, 151-62. JSTOR
Fisher
(1918) reconciled Mendelism and Biometry. Morrison tries to identify the
assumptions behind Fisher’s reconciliation and those behind Pearson’s rejection
of reconciliation.
M. Morrison (2002) Modelling
Populations: Pearson and Fisher on Mendelism and Biometry, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 53, 39-698.
On
the statistical
side see Hald,
Lancaster (1969), Aldrich
(1997) and Stigler (2005) as well as
S. E. Fienberg (1980) Fisher’s
Contribution to Categorical Data, pp. 75-84 in Fienberg & Hinkley.
R. Mensch (1980) Fisher and the
Method of Moments, pp. 67-74 in Fienberg
& Hinkley.
D. Baird (1983) The Fisher/Pearson
Chi-Squared Controversy: A Turning Point for Inductive Inference, British Journal for the Philosophy of
Science, 34, 105-118. JSTOR
H. F. Inman (1994) Karl Pearson and
R. A. Fisher on Statistical Tests: A 1935 Exchange from Nature, American Statistician, 48, 2-11. JSTOR
For more on Pearson see Karl Pearson: A Reader’s Guide. 2007 was the sesquicentenary of Pearson’s birth and the anniversary generated this discussion of the relationship between Pearson (errors) and Fisher (advances):
Stigler, S. M. (2007) Karl Pearson’s
Theoretical Errors and the Advances They Inspired, Statistical Science, 23,
(2), 261-271.
Fisher and Leonard Darwin see biographical sketch
L. H. Darwin (1850–1943) had a strong influence on Fisher and on the course of his career. From Box‘s account he was like a surrogate father. Darwin was honorary president of the Eugenics Education Society (see Mazumdar) when he and Fisher met. Although Darwin was not a scientist, Fisher discussed scientific questions with him: their letters are reprinted (with notes) in Bennett and copies of the originals are available on the web. The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection is dedicated to him: “In gratitude for the encouragement, given to the author, during the last fifteen years, by discussing many of the problems dealt with in this book.” The versatile Major Darwin—after retiring from the Royal Engineers he campaigned for bimetallism—was remembered in the obituary pages of the Economic Journal by J. M. Keynes and his sister-in-law Margaret Keynes, who was Darwin’s niece
Obituary (in Notes and Memoranda) Economic Journal, 53, 438-448 (1943) JSTOR
Another niece, Gwen Raverat, has a portrait
of Uncle Lenny in
Gwen Raverat (1952) Period Piece: A Cambridge Childhood, London: Faber & Faber.
See also
A. W. F. Edwards (2004) Leonard Darwin New Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
N. Serpente (2016) More than a Mentor: Leonard Darwin’s Contribution to the Assimilation of Mendelism into Eugenics and Darwinism, Journal of the History of Biology, 49, 461–494.
Fisher
and ‘Student’ (W. S. Gosset)
see
biographical sketch
Of the older statisticians the most sympathetic to Fisher was W. S. Gosset (1876-1937) St. Andrews; their relationship can be followed through the Letters. Their one public disagreement was about randomisation in experiments. Fisher greatly admired ‘Student’ (see the obituary) and gave him generous credit: ‘Student’s’ work had effected a “logical revolution”. The modest Gosset thought that “Fisher would have discovered it all anyway.” Their relationship is discussed by Box, Pearson (1968), and by
E. S. Pearson (1990) ‘Student’, A Statistical Biography of William Sealy Gosset, Edited
and Augmented by R. L. Plackett with the Assistance of G. A. Barnard, Oxford:
University Press.
There is a brief account of how Fisher transformed Student’s z-test into the modern t-test in the entry on Student’s t distribution on the Earliest known uses of some of the words of mathematics. There are several articles on the subject, including.
C. Eisenhart (1979) On the
Transition from `Students’ z to
`Students’ t, American Statistician, 33,
6-10. JSTOR
J. F. Box (1981) Gosset, Fisher and
the t Distribution, American Statistician, 35, 61-66. JSTOR
J. F. Box
(1987) Guinness, Gosset, Fisher, and Small Samples, Statistical Science, 2,
45-52. JSTOR
S. Senn and
Richardson, W. (1994) The First t-test, Statistics in
Medicine 13, 785–803.
E. L. Lehmann (1999) “Student” and
Small-Sample Theory, Statistical Science,
14, 418-426.
Lehmann’s article also considers
the disagreement between Fisher and Gosset over robustness, occasioned by E. S.
Pearson’s review of the 2nd edition of Fisher’s Statistical
Methods for Research Workers.
Their disagreement over randomization is considered by Senn.
S. Senn (2004) Added Values: Controversies concerning Randomization and
Additivity in Clinical Trials, Statistics
in Medicine 13, 3729–3753.
After Gosset’s death Egon Pearson wrote a fine memoir and organised an edition of his papers:
E. S. Pearson
(1939) “Student” as Statistician, Biometrika, 30, 210-250.
‘Student’s’ Collected Papers (edited by E.S. Pearson and
John Wishart, with a foreword by Launce McMullen. 1942. London: Biometrika
Office.
This publication of the Papers
provided an opportunity to review Student’s contribution: see the reviews by
Cochran Annals of Mathematical Statistics, 15, (1944), 435-438 JSTOR and Isserlis Journal of the
Royal Statistical Society, 106,
(1943), 278-279 JSTOR.
The Collected Papers volume does not
contain Gosset’s review of Statistical Methods for Research Workers
Student (1926) Review of Statistical Methods for Research Workers (R. A. Fisher) Eugenics Review, 18, 148-150.
2008 was the centenary of Student’s paper on “the probable error of a mean” and the anniversary is being remembered in journals and at conferences. The relationship between Student and Fisher is certain to get some attention. So far, see
J. A. Hanley, M. Julien & E. E. M. Moodie (2008) t Distribution Centennial: Student’s z, t, and s: What if Gosset had R? American Statistician, 62, 64-69.
S. Senn (2008) A Century of t-tests, Significance, 5, 37-39.
S. L. Zabell (2008) On Student's 1908 paper “The probable error of a mean,” with comments by S. M. Stigler, J. Aldrich, A. W. F. Edwards, E. Seneta, P. Diaconis & E. L. Lehmann and rejoinder from Zabell, Journal of the American Statistical Association, 103, 1-20.
Ziliak and McCloskey, in their polemic against significance testing, cast Gosset as hero and Fisher as villain and emphasise the differences between them.
S. T. Ziliak and D. N. McCloskey (2008) The Cult of Statistical Significance: How the Standard Error Costs Us Jobs, Justice, and Lives, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
The book is attracting attention and is being widely reviewed.
A. Spanos (2008) Review of Stephen Ziliak and Deirdre McCloskey’s The Cult of Statistical Significance: How the Standard Error Costs Us Jobs, Justice, and Lives, Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics, 1, (1). PDF . With reply by Ziliak and McCloskey. PDF
T. M. Porter (2008) Signifying Little, Science, 320, (June), 1292.
Fisher and Sewall Wright see biographical sketch and correspondence
In the 1920s Fisher and Wright (1889-1988) (NAS Genetics student's appreciation) seemed to be doing parallel work on evolutionary biology. Later, however, the agreements seemed to count less than the differences. The “controversy” between them was set off by Fisher and Ford (1947). Box has some discussion of the relationship between Fisher and Wright. Bennett reproduces their correspondence and provides a commentary on it; a few of the letters are reproduced on the Adelaide correspondence site. The most thorough treatment of the relationship is in Provine’s biography of Wright. Crow has given a shorter account of Wright’s work:
W. B. Provine (1986) Sewall Wright and Evolutionary Biology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
J. F. Crow (1990) Sewall Wright's Place in Twentieth-century Biology, Journal of the History of Biology, 23, 57-89.
There are several articles on the controversy.
W. B. Provine (1985) The R. A. Fisher - Sewall Wright Controversy. Oxford Surveys in Evolutionary Biology, 2, (ed. R. Dawkins & M. Ridley), 197-219. Oxford University Press. (reprinted in Sarkar (1992)).
A. W. F. Edwards (1987) Evolution and Optimization. Nature, 326, 10.
A. W. F. Edwards (1987) What Fisher Meant. Nature, 329, 10.
M. J. S. Hodge (1992) Biology and Philosophy (including Ideology): a Study of Fisher and Wright. In Sarkar (1992), 231-293.
R. A. Skipper (2002) The Persistence of the R.A. Fisher-Sewall Wright Controversy, Biology and Philosophy, 17, 341-367. pdf
A. Plutynski (2005), Parsimony in the Fisher-Wright Debate, Biology and Philosophy, 20, 697-713.
Around 1930 Harold Jeffreys (1891-1989) geophysicist and applied mathematician began applying his version of the Bayesian argument to statistics. Fisher (1932) pounced on him for perpetrating a “howler”. Lane describes the 1932-4 dispute, Howie places it in the intellectual biographies of the protagonists and in the conflict between alternative conceptions of probability, while Aldrich (2004) is a quick survey; Aldrich (2005) gives an account of Jeffreys’s statistical career. Fisher and Jeffreys never agreed about the validity of the Bayesian approach but their relationship mellowed into one of relaxed toleration. Their developing relationship can be followed in the letters in Bennett (1990); the letters are reproduced on the Adelaide correspondence site. There are more personal memories in Swirles and Box. Aldrich (2002) tells a little of how Jeffreys translated Fisher’s ideas into Bayesian terms.
David A. Lane (1980), Fisher,
Jeffreys and the Nature of Probability, pp. 148-160 in Fienberg & Hinkley.
Harold Jeffreys (1974) Fisher and Inverse Probability, International Statistical Review, 42, 1-3.
David Howie (2002) Interpreting Probability: Controversies and Developments in the Early Twentieth Century, New York, Cambridge University Press.
John Aldrich (2004) Harold Jeffreys and R. A. Fisher, ISBA Bulletin, 11, (June), 7-9.
John Aldrich (2005) The Statistical Education of Harold Jeffreys, International Statistical Review, 73, 289-307.
Bertha Swirles (Lady Jeffreys) (1991) Harold Jeffreys: Some Reminiscences, Chance, 4, 22-26.
John Aldrich (2002) How Likelihood and Identification went Bayesian, International Statistical Review, 70, 79-98.
See also Zabell (1992), Barnard (1992) and Aldrich (2008).
For more on Jeffreys and the controversy see Harold Jeffreys as Statistician.
The reviews include: Barnard Biometrics 39, (Dec., 1983), 1121, JSTOR; David Journal of the American Statistical Association, 79, (Sep., 1984), 728-729, JSTOR; Hogg College Mathematics Journal, 15, (Jan., 1984), 82-84, JSTOR; Kotz American Mathematical Monthly, 92, (Mar., 1985), 219-223, JSTOR. Efron Science, New Series, 220, (May, 1983), 827-828, JSTOR, has most to say about the scientific issues at stake while Yates Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, A, 147, (No. 1 1984), 116-118, JSTOR has most to say about the Fisher-Neyman relationship (from Fisher’s point of view).
For a time Fisher and Neyman were both teaching at UCL. Churchill Eisenhart (1913-1994), a Neyman student who attended Fisher’s lectures, left a vivid account of the conflicts involved in
Ingram Olkin (1992) A Conversation with Churchill Eisenhart. Statistical Science, 7, 514-5. JSTOR
Neyman gave his own account of his relations with Fisher
J. Neyman (1961) The Silver Jubilee of My Dispute with Fisher, Journal of the Operations Research Society of Japan, 3, 145-154.
Neyman gave an overall judgement of Fisher’s work when he
reviewed the Contributions volume
J. Neyman (1951) Fisher’s Collected Papers: Contributions to Mathematical Statistics, Scientific Monthly, 72, No. 6, 406-408. JSTOR
Fisher
answered Neyman’s accusations that he had not acted in “good faith” in a letter
to P. H. H. (Horace) Gray. Neyman wrote a second assessment after Fisher’s
death: Neyman (1967).
Fisher
thought of Neyman as a meddling mathematician with no experience of science and criticised him in the JRSSB
(1955) article “Statistical Methods
and Scientific Induction” (JSTOR)
and in Statistical
Methods and Scientific
Inference.
Fienberg and Tanur consider
parallels and divergences in the work of Fisher and Neyman on experiments and
surveys
S. E. Fienberg & J. M. Tanur (1996) Reconsidering the Fundamental Contributions of Fisher and Neyman on Experimentation and Sampling. International Statistical Review 64, 237-253.
Lehmann
considers the compatibility of the Fisher and Neyman views of testing in
E. L. Lehmann (1993) The Fisher,
Neyman-Pearson Theories of Testing Hypotheses: One Theory or Two? Journal of the American Statistical Association,
88, 1242-1249. JSTOR
See
also Hacking (1965), Zabell (1992) and Aldrich (2000).
Senn considers their dispute over additivity in the analysis of
variance:
S. Senn (2004) Added Values: Controversies concerning Randomization and
Additivity in Clinical Trials, Statistics
in Medicine 13, 3729–3753.
Fisher’s
significance for others
Fisher was significant for everyone who came into Statistics in the English-speaking world—at least—in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s. The case of Jimmie Savage was typical: he learnt the subject from Fisher’s Statistical Methods for Research Workers and he later met and corresponded with Fisher. See Rereading Fisher.
The writings listed here relate to
individuals who knew Fisher and for whom Fisher was an important part of their story—mainly students and junior
colleagues. They are prominent in the ranks of the authors of Obituaries Fisher lectures Papers on
genetics
Papers on
statistics.
Few people learnt Statistics from
Fisher—at least in the conventional way. Rothamsted was a research station and
Fisher was professor of genetics in London and in Cambridge. At
Rothamsted there were research students—Winifred Mackenzie, his computing
assistant and co-author, was one and F. E.
(Betty) Allan CSIRO
another—and “voluntary workers” such as Harold
Hotelling (1895-1973); see Hotelling’s
review of SMRW. Fisher’s Rothamsted appointments, J. O. Irwin
(1898-1982), J.
Wishart (1898-1956) and F.
Yates (1902-1994), learnt the Fisher approach by
working with him. In 1931 Wishart moved to Cambridge taking Fisher’s ideas with
him, influencing amongst others Jeffreys, M. S. Bartlett
(1910-2002) and W.
G. Cochran
(1909-1980). When Fisher became professor at University College he did not move
house and he was still a presence at Rothamsted when Yates took over the
Statistics department. Oscar
Kempthorne (1919-2000) was there in the early 40s. Important American
contacts included Hotelling and George
W. Snedecor (1881-1974) who invited Fisher to Iowa State. W.
J. Youden (1900-1971), E. A. Cornish (1909-1973) and M. M. Barnard CSIRO studied with Fisher in London. In
France Georges Darmois
was an early exponent of Fisherian statistics and his student Daniel Dugué
spent time with Fisher; for the French statisticians see Aldrich (2010). Georg Rasch
took Fisher’s ideas to Denmark. C.
R. Rao (b. 1920) was Fisher’s only Cambridge PhD student in Statistics,
going to Fisher after he had published the Cramér-Rao and Rao-Blackwell
theorems! In the 1950s Fisher welcomed anyone like D. A. Sprott (b.
1930) who was not “wholly sold on the Neyman-Pearson approach”. Of the people who never worked with Fisher, G. A. Barnard
(1915-2002) was probably the closest to him; their friendship began in the late
40s after Barnard had conceded to Fisher after initially disagreeing with him
over testing in the 2X2 table.
E. S. Pearson (1957) John Wishart 1898-1956, Biometrika, 44, 1-8. JSTOR
D. J. Finney (1995) Frank Yates, Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society of London, 41, 554-573.
Healy (1995) on Yates.
W. L. Smith
(1978) Harold Hotelling 1895-1973, Annals
of Statistics, 6, 1173-1183. JSTOR
K. J. Arrow & E. L. Lehmann (2005) Harold Hotelling 1895-1973, National Academy of Sciences, 87, 1-15.
Gertrude M. Cox; Paul G. Homeyer (1975) Professional and Personal Glimpses of
George W. Snedecor, Biometrics, 31,
265-301. JSTOR
P. A. P. Moran memoir of E. A. Cornish for the Australian Academy of Science.
E. B.
Andersen (1982) Georg Rasch (1901–1980), Psychometrika, 47, (4), 375-376.
J. Olsen Essays on Georg Rasch and his Contributions to Statistics, Ph.D. thesis, Institute of Economics, University of Copenhagen. Extract.
P. Deheuvels (1990) Daniel Dugué, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society A, 153, 99-100. JSTOR
M. H. DeGroot (1988) A
Conversation with George A. Barnard, Statistical
Science, 3, 196-212. JSTOR
D. V.
Lindley (2003) Professor George A. Barnard (1915-2002), The Statistician,
52, 231-234.
M. H. DeGroot (1987) A Conversation with C. R. Rao, Statistical Science, 3, 53-67. JSTOR
A. K. Bera (2003) The ET Interview: Professor C. R. Rao, Econometric Theory, 19, 331-400. ET Interview: C. R. Rao.
For Bartlett see
I. Olkin (1989) A Conversation with Maurice Bartlett, Statistical Science, 4, 151-163. JSTOR
J. Gani (ed) (1982) The Making of Statisticians, New York:
Springer-Verlag.
The
Gani volume also has an autobiography by D. J. Finney who was at Rothamsted in
the Yates era.
Darmois,
Irwin, Hotelling and Snedecor are in the Statisticians of the Centuries volume. The people mentioned in this
section appear among Fisher’s correspondents in Bennett (1990),
though some, like, Yates saw him so often they did not really need letters.
In biology Fisher’s most important collaborator was
E.
B. Ford (Papers in the Bodleian). Their
partnership began when Fisher was at Rothamsted and Ford was an undergraduate
at Oxford; their correspondence is available online.
When Ford published his Ecological Genetics soon after Fisher’s death,
he looked back on their partnership and dedicated the book to Fisher’s memory.
There is some relevant literature in the section on Sewall Wright. In
London and Cambridge
Fisher headed genetics departments. These were small departments and Fisher’s
influence on their members was strong. Amongst the staff and students in these
departments were C.
Bliss, J. H.
Bennett, W. Bodmer, L. L. Cavalli-Sforza, A. W. F. Edwards, W.
D. (Bill) Hamilton, Mary
Lyon, K.
Mather, A. R. G. Owen, R.
R. Race, G. L. Taylor…. There is not as much bio- and autobiographical
material as in Statistics but see the following memoirs:
E. B. Ford (2005) R. A. Fisher: An Appreciation, Genetics, 171, 415-417. Genetics. (See also Box (2005))
B. Clarke (1995) Edmund Brisco Ford, Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, 41, 147-168.
Joe Cain (2001) Ford, Edmund Brisco, Encyclopedia of Life Sciences available to subscribing institutions at http://www.els.net/
D. Lewis (1992) Sir Kenneth Mather, Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, 38, 249-266.
C. Clarke (1985) Robert Russell Race, Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, 31, 445-492.
J. Cullen (1995) Sir George Taylor, Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, 41, 459-469.
Witness Seminar (Oral History); The Rhesus Factor and Disease Prevention (2003).
See the Bill Hamilton website for evidence of Fisher’s influence on him. See also A. Grafen (2004) Willam Donald Hamilton,. Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, 50, 109-132. here
_____________________________________________________
Papers on Statistics see also Pearson Student Neyman Jeffreys Fisher
lectures
Apart from the Mahalanobis 1938 biography and the 1951 anniversary pieces for the publication of the Statistical Methods for Research Workers, all the articles date from after Fisher’s death. A few are modern treatments of Fisher topics. The links are mostly to JSTOR. Usually the papers’ titles are self-explanatory but it may help to know that Bennett (1991) about smoking and Senn (1994) about randomisation.
Aldrich, J.
(1997) R. A. Fisher and the Making of Maximum Likelihood 1912-22, Statistical Science, 12, 162-176. JSTOR
Aldrich, J.
(2000) Fisher’s “Inverse Probability” of 1930, International Statistical Review, 68, 155-172. pdf
Aldrich,
J. (2003) The Language of the English Biometric School, International
Statistical Review, 71, 109-131. pdf
Aldrich, J. (2005) Fisher and Regression, Statistical Science, 20, 401-417. pdf
Aldrich,
J. (2007) Information
and Economics in Fisher’s Design of Experiments, International Statistical Review, 75, 131-149.
pdf
Aldrich, J. (2008) R. A. Fisher on Bayes and Bayes’ Theorem, Bayesian Analysis, 3, 161-170. here
Aldrich,
J. (2008) Keynes
among the Statisticians, History of
Political Economy, 40,
265-316. pdf
Aldrich,
J. (2009) Burnside’s Engagement with the “Modern Theory of Statistics”. Archive
for History of Exact Sciences, 63
(1), 51-79. pdf
Aldrich, J. (2009) England and Continental Probability in the Inter-War Years Journal Electronique d'Histoire des Probabilités et de la Statistique December, pp. 24.
Aldrich, J. (2010) The Econometricians’ Statisticians 1895-1945. History of Political Economy, 42, (1), 111-154. pdf
Aldrich, J. (2010) Tales of Two Societies: London and Paris 1860-1940 Journal Electronique d'Histoire des Probabilités et de la Statistique December, pp.41.
Armate, M. (1988) La construction des
notions d'estimation et de vraisemblance chez Ronald A. Fisher, Journal de la Société statistique de Paris,
129, (1-2), 69-96.
Armitage, Peter (2003) Fisher, Bradford Hill, and Randomization, International Journal of Epidemiology, 32,
925-928.
Barnard, G. A. (1987) R. A. Fisher—A True Bayesian? International Statistical Review, 55, 183-189.
Barnard, G. A. (1990) Fisher: a Retrospective (with discussion), Chance, 3, 22-32.
Barnard, G. A. (1995) Pivotal
Models and the Fiducial Argument, International
Statistical Review, 63, 309-323.
Barnard, G. A. & D. A. Sprott (1983) The Generalised Problem of the Nile: Robust Confidence Sets for Parametric Functions, Annals of Statistics, 11, 104-113. JSTOR
Basu, D. (1980) Randomization Analysis of Experimental Data: The Fisher
Randomization Test, (with discussion by D. V. Hinkley, O. Kempthorne, D. A.
Lane, D. V. Lindley and D. B. Rubin) Journal of the American
Statistical Association, 75, 575-595. JSTOR
Bennett,
J. H. (1991) R. A. Fisher and the Role of a Statistical Consultant, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society.
Series A, 154, 443-445. JSTOR
Bingham, C. (1980) Distribution on
the Sphere, pp. 171-181 of Fienberg & Hinkley.
Bliss, C. I. (1964) R. A. Fisher’s
Contribution to Medicine and Bioassay, Biometrics,
20, 273-285. JSTOR
Bodmer, Walter (2003) RA Fisher, statistician and geneticist
extraordinary: a personal view, International Journal of
Epidemiology, 32, 938-942.
Box, J. F. (1980) Fisher: the Early
Years, pp. 35-45 of Fienberg & Hinkley.
Box, J. F. (1980) R. A. Fisher and
the Design of Experiments, 1922-26, American Statistician, 34, 1-7. JSTOR
Box, J. F. (2005) A
Reminiscence of R. A. Fisher, American
Statistician, 59, 312-314. (See also Ford (2005))
Buehler, R. (1980) Fiducial Inference,
pp. 109-118 of Fienberg &
Hinkley.
Chalmers, Iain (2003) Fisher and Bradford Hill: theory and pragmatism? International Journal of Epidemiology, 32, 922-924.
Clarke, C. (1991) Invited Commentary on R. A. Fisher, American Journal of Epidemiology, 134, 1371-1374.
Cochran, W. G. (1980) Fisher and
the Analysis of Variance, pp. 17-34 of Fienberg & Hinkley.
Cook, R. D. (1980) Smoking and Lung
Cancer, pp. 182-191 of Fienberg
& Hinkley.
Conniffe, D. (1992) Keynes on
Probability and Statistical Inference and the Links to Fisher, Cambridge Journal of Economics, 16, 475-489.
Cornish, E. A. (1964) Fisher’s
Activities in Australia 1958-62, Biometrics,
20, 372-373. JSTOR
Cox, N. J. (2008) Speaking Stata:
Correlation with confidence, or Fisher's z
revisited, Stata Journal, 8, 413-439.
Das Gupta,
S. (1980) Distribution of the Correlation Coefficient, pp. 9-16 of Fienberg & Hinkley.
Das Gupta, S. (1980) Discriminant
Analysis, pp. 9-16 of Fienberg & Hinkley.
Dawid, A. P. (1991) Fisherian
Inference in Likelihood and Prequential Frames of Reference (with discussion), Journal of the Royal Statistical Society,
Series B, 53,79-109. JSTOR
Denis,
D. J. (2004) The Modern Testing Hybrid: R. A. Fisher's Fading Influence, with
dicussion by Amatte, Bru, Gill, Kwan,
Friendly, Lecoutre, Poitevineau, Lecoutre, Stigler and reply from Denis, Journal de la Société de Francaise de
Statistique, 145, 5-68.
Doll, Richard (2003) Fisher and Bradford Hill: their personal impact, International
Journal of Epidemiology, 32, 929-931.
Edwards, A. W. F. (1978) R. A. Fisher’s Work on Statistical Inference. In I fondamenti dell’inferenza statistica. Firenze: Parente, 117-124. Reprinted in A. W. F. Edwards (1992) Likelihood. Expanded edition.
Edwards, A.W.F. (1993) Galton, Karl Pearson and modern statistical theory. In Sir Francis Galton F.R.S. - The Legacy of his Ideas, ed. M. Keynes, 91-107. London: Macmillan.
Edwards, A.W.F. (1993) John Venn and R. A. Fisher. The Caian, November 1993, 64-66.
Edwards, A. W. F. (1996) The Early
History of the Statistical Estimation of Linkage, Annals of Human Genetics,
60, 237-249.
Edwards, A.W.F. (1997) Three Early Papers on Efficient Parametric Estimation. Statistical Science 12, 35-47. JSTOR
Edwards, A. W. F. (1997) What Did
Fisher Mean by `Inverse Probability’ in 1912-22?, Statistical Science, 12,
177-184. JSTOR
Edwards, A. W. F (2005) “R. A. Fisher, Statistical Methods for Research Workers, 1925” in I. Grattan-Guinness (ed) Landmark Writings in Western Mathematics : Case Studies, 1640-1940, Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Efron, B. & D. V. Hinkley (1978) Assessing the
Accuracy of the Maximum Likelihood Estimator: Observed Versus Expected Fisher
Information, Biometrika, 65, 457-482.
Fienberg, S.E. (1980) Fisher's Contributions to the Analysis of Categorical Data, pp. 75-84 of Fienberg & Hinkley.
Fienberg, S.E. (1997) Introduction to R. A. Fisher on Inverse Probability and Likelihood. Statistical Science 12, 161. JSTOR
Finney, D. J. (1964) Sir Ronald
Fisher’s Contribution to Biometric Statistics, Biometrics, 20, 322-329.
JSTOR
Geisser, S.
(1980) Basic Theory of the 1922 Mathematical Statistics Paper, pp. 59-66 of Fienberg & Hinkley.
Gower, J. C. (1990) Fisher’s Optimal Scores and Multiple Correspondence Analysis. Biometrics, 46, 947-961. JSTOR
Hald, A (1999) On the History of Maximum Likelihood in Relation to Inverse Probability and Least Squares, Statistical Science, 14, 214-222.
Hall, N. S. (2007) R. A. Fisher and his Advocacy of
Randomization, Journal of the History of Biology, 40, 295-325.
Hall, N. S. (2010) Ronald Fisher and Gertrude Cox: Two
Statistical Pioneers Sometimes Cooperate and Sometimes Collide, American Statistician, 14, 212-220.
Hampel, F. (2006), The Proper Fiducial Argument, General Theory of Information Transfer and Combinatorics, 512-527.
Hand, D. J. (2105) From evidence to understanding: a commentary on Fisher (1922) ‘On the mathematical foundations of theoretical statistics’, Philosophical Trans-actions of the Royal Society A, 373,
Healy, M. J. R. (2003) R. A. Fisher the Statistician, Statistician (Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series D), 52 (3), 303-310.
Hinkley, D. V. (1980) Theory of
Statistical Estimation: the 1925 Paper, pp. 85-94 of Fienberg & Hinkley.
Hinkley, D. V. (1980) Fisher’s
Development of Conditional Inference, pp. 101-108 of Fienberg & Hinkley.
Holschuh, N. (1980) Randomization
and Design: I, pp. 35-45 of Fienberg
& Hinkley.
Hotelling,
H. (1951) The Impact of R. A. Fisher on
Statistics, Journal of the American
Statistical Association, 46, 35-46.
JSTOR
Johnstone,
D. J. (1987) Tests of Significance Following R. A. Fisher, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 38, 481-499. JSTOR
Jones, D. A.
(2010) In Defense of Fisher, American
Scientist, 98, (1), 3.
Lehmann E. L. (1990) Model Specification: The
Views of Fisher and Neyman, and Later Developments, Statistical Science, 5,
pp. 160-168. JSTOR
Lenhard, J. (2006) Models and Statistical Inference: The Controversy between Fisher and Neyman-Pearson, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Advance Access published on January 3, 2006.
Li, C. C. (1968) Fisher, Wright and
Path Coefficients, Biometrics, 24, 471-483. JSTOR.
Louçã, F. (2009) Emancipation through Interaction—How Eugenics and Statistics converged and diverged, Journal of the History of Biology, 42, (4), 649-684.
Ludbrook, J. (2005) R. A. Fisher's Life and Death in Australia, 1959–1962, American Statistician, 59, 164-165.
Mahalanobis, P. C. (1938) Professor Ronald Aylmer Fisher, Sankhya, 4, 265-272.
Marks, Harry M (2003) Rigorous uncertainty: why RA Fisher is important, International Journal of Epidemiology, 32, 932-937.
Mather, K. (1951) R. A. Fisher’s Statistical Methods for Research Workers:
An Appreciation, Journal of the American
Statistical Association, 46, 51-54.
JSTOR
Parolini, G. (2015) The Emergence of Modern Statistics in Agricultural Science: Analysis of Variance, Experimental Design and the Reshaping of Research at Rothamsted Experimental Station, 1919-1933, Journal of the History of Biology, 48, 301-335.
Pearce, S. C. (1979) Experimental Design: R.A. Fisher and Some Modern Rivals, Statistician, 28, 153-161. JSTOR
Perdersen, J. G. (1978) Fiducial
Inference, International Statistical
Review, 46, 147-170.
Picard, R. (1980) Randomization and
Design: II, pp. 46-58 of Fienberg & Hinkley.
Pratt, J. W. (1976) F. Y. Edgeworth
and R. A. Fisher on the Efficiency of Maximum Likelihood Estimation, Annals of Statistics, 4, 501-514. JSTOR
Preece, D.A. (1990) R. A. Fisher and Experimental Design: A Review. Biometrics 46, 925-935. JSTOR
Rao, C. R.
(1964) Ronald Aylmer Fisher—the Architect of Multivariate Analysis, Biometrics, 20, 286-300. JSTOR
Rao, C. R. (1992) R. A. Fisher: The
Founder of Modern Statistics, Statistical
Science, 7, 34-48. JSTOR
Runger, G. (1980) Some Numerical
Illustrations of Fisher’s Theory of Statistical Estimation, pp. 95-100 of Fienberg & Hinkley.
Seal, H. (1967) The Historical Development of the Gauss
Linear Model, Biometrika, 54, 1-24. JSTOR
Seidenfeld, T. (1992) R. A.
Fisher’s Fiducial Argument and Bayes’ Theorem, Statistical Science, 7,
358-368. JSTOR
Seidenfeld, T. (1992) R. A. Fisher on the Design of Experiments and Statistical Estimation. In Sarkar (1992), 23-36.
Senn, S. (1994) Fisher’s
Game with the Devil, Statistics in
Medicine 13, 217-230.
Senn, S. (2006) An
Early “Atkins’ Diet”: R. A. Fisher Analyses a Medical “Experiment”. Biometrical
Journal, 48,
193-204.
Speed, T. P. (1987) What is an
Analysis of Variance? (with discussion), Annals
of Statistics, 15, 885-941. JSTOR
Stigler, S. M. (1973). Laplace, Fisher and the Discovery of the Concept of Sufficiency, Biometrika, 60 39-445. JSTOR
Stigler, S.M. (1999) The
Foundations of Statistics at Stanford, American
Statistician 53, 263–266.
Stigler S. M. (2001) Ancillary History, in M. C. M. de Gunst, C. A. J. Klaassen, A. W. van der Vaart, (eds.), State of the Art in Probability and Statistics; Festschrift for Willem R. van Zwet, Institute of Mathematical Statistics, Lecture Notes—Monograph Series.
Stigler
S. M. (2005) Fisher in 1921, Statistical Science,
20, 32-49. Project
Euclid
Stigler, S. M. (2006) How Ronald Fisher became
a mathematical statistician, Mathématiques et sciences humaines, n° 176, Winter 2006, special
issue: Contribution to the history of probabilities. Tribute issue to Bernard
Bru.
Stigler, S. M. (2007) The Epic Story of Maximum Likelihood, Statistical Science, 22, (4), 598-620 Project Euclid
Stigler, S. M. (2007) The Pedigree of the International Biometric Society, Biometrics, 63, (2), 317-321.
Stigler, S. M. (2007) Karl Pearson’s
Theoretical Errors and the Advances They Inspired, Statistical Science, 23,
(2), 261-271.
Stigler, S. M. (2008) Fisher and the 5% Level, Chance, 21, (4), 12.
Stolley, P. D. (1991) When Genius Errs: R.A. Fisher and the Lung Cancer Controversy, American Journal of Epidemiology, 133, 416-425.
Street, D. J. (1990) Fisher’s Contributions to Agricultural Statistics. Biometrics, 46, 937-945. JSTOR
Thompson, E. A. (1990) R. A. Fisher’s Contributions to Genetical Statistics. Biometrics, 46, 905-914. JSTOR
Wallace, D.
L. (1980) The Behrens-Fisher and Fieller-Creasy
Problems, pp. 119-147 of Fienberg & Hinkley.
Welsh, A. H. and J.
Robinson (2005) Fisher and Inference for Scores, International Statistical Review, 73, 131-150.
Wynder, E. L. (1991) Re: “When Genius Errs: R.A. Fisher and the Lung Cancer Controversy,” American Journal of Epidemiology, 134, 1467-1469.
Yates, F.
(1951) The Influence of Statistical
Methods for Research Workers on the Development of the Science of
Statistics, Journal of the American
Statistical Association, 46,
19-34. JSTOR
Yates, F. (1964) Sir Ronald Fisher
and the Design of Experiments, Biometrics,
20, 307-321. JSTOR
Yates, F. (1964) Fiducial
Probability, Recognisable Sub-sets and Behrens’ Test, Biometrics, 20, 343-360.
JSTOR
Yates, F. (1975) The Early History
of Experimental Design, pp. 581-595 of J. Srivastava (ed) A Survey of Statistical Design and Linear Models, Amsterdam:
North-Holland.
Youden, W. J. (1951) The Fisherian
Revolution in Methods of Experimentation, Journal
of the American Statistical Association, 46, 47-50. JSTOR
Zabell, S. (1989) R. A. Fisher on the History of Inverse Probability (with discussion), Statistical Science, 4, 247-63. JSTOR
Zabell, S. (1992) R. A. Fisher and
the Fiducial Argument, Statistical
Science, 7, 369-387. JSTOR
Papers on Genetics, Eugenics and Evolutionary Biology see also Pearson Wright Fisher lectures
Ao, P. (2005) Laws of Darwinian
Evolutionary Theory, Physics of Life
Reviews, 2, 117-156.
Band, H. T.
(2000) Sir Ronald Fisher and Natural Selection, , Trends in Ecology &
Evolution, 15, 161-162.
Bartley, M. M. (1994) Conflicts in Human
Progress: Sexual Selection and the Fisherian “Runaway,” British Journal for the History of Science, 27, 177-196.
Bodmer, W. F. (1992) Early British
Discoveries in Human Genetics: Contributions of R.A. Fisher and J.B.S. Haldane
to the Development of Blood Groups, American Journal of Human Genetics, 50, 671–676.
Cain, A.J. (1988) A Criticism of J. R. G. Turner’s Article “Fisher's Evolutionary Faith and the challenge of Mimicry”. Oxford Surveys in Evolutionary Biology, 5, (ed. P. H. Harvey & L. Partridge), 246-248. Oxford University Press.
Crow, J.F. (1990) R. A. Fisher, a Centennial View. Genetics, 124, 207-211. Free text.
Crow, J.F. (2002) Here’s to Fisher, Additive Genetic Variance, and the Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection. Evolution, 56, 1313-1316. JSTOR
Edwards, A. W. F. (1990) Fisher, W, and the Fundamental Theorem. Theoretical Population Biology, 38, 276-284.
Edwards, A.W.F. (1990) R. A. Fisher: Twice Professor of Genetics: London and Cambridge. Biometrics, 46, 897-904. JSTOR Revised version in Statistician (Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series D), 52 (3), 311-318.
Edwards, A.W.F. (1994) The Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection. Biological Reviews 69, 443-474.
Edwards, A. W. F. (1996) W. D. Hamilton’s Darwinian Predecessors, TLS 6th December, reprinted in Galton Institute Newsletter, (June, 1997) here.
Edwards, A. W. F. (1998) The Eugenics Society and the Development of Biometry. The 1997 Galton Lecture, London, 19th September. Essays in the History of Eugenics, ed. R. A. Peel, 156-172. London: The Galton Institute.
Edwards, A. W. F. (1998) Natural Selection and the Sex Ratio: Fisher’s Sources, American Naturalist 151, 564-569.
Edwards, A. W. F. (2000) The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection.
In Perspectives, ed. J. F. Crow and W. F. Dove. Genetics 154, 1419–1426. Genetics Online
Edwards, A. W. F. (2000)
Fisher Information and the Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection. Rendiconti (B) Istituto Lombardo di Scienze
e Lettere, Milano.
Edwards, A. W. F. (2000)
Carl Düsing (1884) on the Regulation of the Sex-ratio, Theoretical Population Biology, 58, 255-257.
Edwards, A. W. F. (2001)
Darwin and Mendel United: the Contributions of Fisher, Haldane and Wright up to
1932. In Encyclopedia of Genetics,
ed. E. C. R. Reeve, London: Fitzroy Dearborn, 77-83.
Edwards, A. W. F. (2005) Linkage Methods in Human Genetics before the Computer, Human Genetics, 118, 515-30.
Edwards, A. W. F. (2006) Fisher,
Demetrius and Wright: contending models, BioEssays 28, 440.
Edwards, A. W. F. (2007) R. A. Fisher's 1943 Unravelling of the Rhesus
Blood-Group System, Genetics 175, 471–476.
Edwards, A. W. F. (2011) Mathematizing Darwin, Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 65,
421–430.
Edwards, A. W. F. (2017)
Haldane and Fisher—Scientific Interactions, Journal
of Genetics, 96, (5), 747–752.
Esposito, M. (2011) Utopianism in the British
Evolutionary Synthesis, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and
Biomedical Sciences, 42, 40-49.
Frank, S.
A. and Slatkin, M. (1992) Fisher’s Fundamental Theorem of
Natural Selection. Trends in Ecology and
Evolution 7, 92-95.
Gould, S.
J. (1996) The Smoking Gun of Eugenics. In S. J. Gould (ed.) Dinosaur
in a Haystack: Reflections in Natural History (pp. 296-308). London: Cape.
Grafen, A. (2003) Fisher the Evolutionary Biologist, Statistician (Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series D), 52 (3), 319-330.
Karlin, S. (1992) R.
A. Fisher and Evolutionary Theory, Statistical
Science, 7, 13-33. JSTOR
Kempthorne, O. (1974) A Review of Collected Papers of R. A. Fisher ed. J. H. Bennett, Social Biology, 21, 98-101.
Leigh, E. G. jr. (1986) Ronald Fisher and the Development of Evolutionary Theory. I. The Role of Selection. Oxford Surveys in Evolutionary Biology, 3, (ed. R. Dawkins & M. Ridley), 187-223. Oxford University Press.
Leigh, E. G. jr. (1987)
Ronald Fisher and the Development of Evolutionary Theory. II. Influences of New
Variation on Evolutionary process. Oxford
Surveys in Evolutionary Biology, 4,
(ed. P. H. Harvey & L. Partridge), 212-263. Oxford University Press.
Leigh, E. G. (1999) The Modern Synthesis, Ronald Fisher and
Creationism, Trends in Ecology &
Evolution, 14, 495-498.
Mayo, O. (1990) R. A. Fisher’s Contribution to Evolutionary Theory. Evolución Biológica, 4, 1-21.
Mooney, S. M. (1995) H. J. Muller and R. A. Fisher on the Evolutionary Significance of Sex, Journal of the History of Biology, 28, 133-149.
Moore, J. (2007) R. A. Fisher: A Faith Fit for Eugenics, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 38 (1), 110-135.
Moran, P. A. P. and Smith, C. A. B. (1966) Commentary on R. A. Fisher’s Paper 'The Correlation between Relatives on the Supposition of Mendelian Inheritance’. Eugenics Laboratory Memoirs XLI, Galton Laboratory, University College London.
Morrison, M. (2002) Modeling Populations: Pearson and Fisher on Mendelism and Biometry, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 53, 39-68.
Morrison, M. (2006) Unification, Explanation and Explaining Unity: The Fisher-Wright Controversy, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 57 (1), 233-245.
Norton, B.J. (1975) Metaphysics and Population Genetics: Karl Pearson and the background to Fisher’s multi-factorial theory of inheritance. Annals of Science, 32, 537-553.
Norton, B.J.
(1978) Fisher and the Neo-Darwinian Synthesis. E. G. Forbes (ed.), Human Implications of Scientific Advance.
Proceedings of the XVth International Congress of the History of Science. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp.
481–494.
Norton, B.J. (1981) La Situation Intellectuelle au Moment des Débuts de Fisher en Génétique
des Populations. Revue de Synthèse
IIIe serie, 103-104, 230-250.
(and others in this special number R.A.Fisher
et l'histoire de la génétique des populations).
Norton, B. (1983) Fisher’s Entrance into Evolutionary Science: the Role of Eugenics. Dimensions of Darwinism. Themes and Counterthemes in Twentieth Century Evolutionary Theory (ed. M. Grene), 19-29. Cambridge University Press.
Novitski, E. (2004) On Fisher's Criticism of Mendel's Results With the Garden Pea, Genetics, 166, 1133-1136
O’Donald, P. (1990) Fisher’s Contributions to the Theory of Sexual Selection as the Basis of Recent Research. Theoretical Population Biology, 38, 285-300.
S. Okasha (2008) Fisher’s Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection—A Philosophical Analysis, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 59 (3), 319 - 351.
Piegorsch, W.
W. (1990) Fisher’s Contributions to Genetics and Heredity,
with Special Emphasis on the Gregor Mendel Controversy. Biometrics 46, 915-924. JSTOR
Pilpel, A. (2007) Statistics is not Enough: Revisiting Ronald A. Fisher’s Critique (1936) of Mendel’s Experimental Results (1866) Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 38, 618-626.
Plutynski, A. (2005) Explanatory Unification and the Early Synthesis, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 56, 595-609.
Plutynski, A. (2006) What was Fisher’s Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection and What was It for? Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 37, 59-82.
Provine, W. B. (1978) The Role of Mathematical Population Geneticists in the Evolutionary Synthesis of the 1930s and 1940s. Studies in the History of Biology 2, 167-192.
Provine, W. B. (1990) Population Genetics (reprint of papers by Fisher, Haldane, and Wright, with an introduction). Bulletin of Mathematical Biology, 52, 201-318 (Special issue Classics of Theoretical Biology, Part I).
Race, R. R.
(1964) Some Notes on Fisher’s Contributions to Human Blood Groups, Biometrics, 20, 361-367. JSTOR
Race, R. R. and R. Sanger (1982)
Fisher’s Contribution to Rh, Vox
Sanguinis, 43, 354-356.
Sarkar, S.
(2004) Evolutionary Theory in the 1920s: The Nature of the “Synthesis”, Philosophy
of Science, 71, 1215–1226.
Tabery, J. (2004) The “Evolutionary Synthesis” of George Udny Yule, Journal of the History of Biology, 37(1), 73-101.
Tabery, J.
(2008) R. A. Fisher, Lancelot Hogben, and the Origin(s) of Genotype–Environment
Interaction, Journal of the History of Biology, 41, 717–761.
Tabery, J. and S. Sarkar (2015) R. A. Fisher, Lancelot Hogben, and the `Competition' for the Chair of Social Biology at the London School of Economics in 1930: Correcting the Legend, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 69, 437-446.
Turner, J.R.G. (1985) Fisher’s Evolutionary Faith and the Challenge of Mimicry. Oxford Surveys in Evolutionary Biology, 2, (ed. R. Dawkins & M. Ridley), 159-96. Oxford University Press.
Turner, J.R.G. (1987)
Random Genetic Drift, R. A. Fisher, and the Oxford School of Ecological
Genetics. The Probabilistic Revolution.
Vol. 2: Ideas in the Sciences (eds. G. Gigerenzer, L. Krüger & M.
Morgan). Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press/Bradford Books, 313-354.
Turner, J.R.G. (1988) Reply: Men of Fisher’s? Oxford Surveys in Evolutionary Biology, 5, (ed. P.H. Harvey & L. Partridge), 249-252. Oxford University Press.
Watt, D. C.
(2000) C P Blacker, R A Fisher and L Penrose on Eugenic Fundamentals, Galton Institute Newsletter, Parts I
and II.
Welling, F. (1986) What about R. A.
Fisher’s Statement of the “too good” Data of J. G. Mendel’s Pisum Paper? Journal
of Heredity, 77, 281-283.
Williams, C. B. (1964) Some
Experiences of a Biologist with R. A. Fisher and Statistics, Biometrics, 20, 301-06. JSTOR
Wooding, S. (2006)
Phenylthiocarbamide: A 75-Year Adventure in Genetics and Natural Selection, Genetics, 172, 2015-2023. Genetics Online
These
books, in one way or another, take Fisher as their starting point. They
illustrate how Fisher continued to influence developments even after his long
life had ended. Although the books present the authors’ own ideas, they often
have interesting things to say about Fisher’s ideas.
T. Seidenfeld,
(1979) Philosophical Problems of
Statistical Inference: Learning from R. A. Fisher, Dordrecht: Reidel.
A
philosopher attempts to develop Fisher’s ideas on fiducial probability.
A. W.F. Edwards
(1972/1992) Likelihood (Expanded
Edition, with a new preface), Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
An
attempt to develop Fisher’s ideas on likelihood.
I. Hacking (1965) Logic
of Statistical Inference, Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press.
A
philosopher attempts to reconstruct the foundations of Statistics, taking issue
with some of Fisher’s ideas, while developing others.
B. R. Frieden (1998) Physics from Fisher Information: A Unification, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
This book attempts to develop physical theory on the basis of Fisher information.
D. A. S. Fraser (1968) The Structure of Inference, New York: Wiley.
An early instalment of a continuing project of reconstructing fiducial inference.
O. E. Barndorff-Nielsen. & D. R. Cox (1994) Inference and Asymptotics, London: Chapman & Hall.
A continuing project to develop
the conditional inference first proposed by Fisher in his 1934 Two New Properties of Mathematical Likelihood.
R. Royall (1997) Statistical
Evidence: A Likelihood Paradigm. London: Chapman & Hall.
J. K. Ghosh (ed) (1988) Statistical Information and Likelihood: A Collection of Critical Essays by Dr. D. Basu, New York: Springer-Verlag.
Basu’s critical essays on Fisherian themes: ancillarity, likelihood, randomisation.
There
are Fisher memorial lecture series in the UK, USA and Australia. (See here for information
about the British series and here for
information about the US series, including lists of the lectures by year.) The published
lectures are listed below; sometimes the title does not match that of the
original lecture. The invitation to give the lecture is a recognition of the lecturer’s contribution and the lecture
is most often a tour d’horizon of the lecturer’s specialism. There may be some
remarks on how the specialism is rooted in Fisher’s work. Some
lectures have much more to say about
Fisher, his statistics, his genetics or both—they are marked fff.
The links are all to JSTOR. Some people have contributed
lectures to more than one series.
Anderson,
T. W. (1996) R. A. Fisher and Multivariate Analysis, Statistical Science, 11, 20-34. JSTOR
Anscombe, F. J. (1982) How Much to Look at the Data, Utilitas Mathematica, 21A, 23-28.
fff Bartlett,
M. S. (1965) R. A. Fisher and the First Fifty Years of Statistical Methodology,
Journal of the American Statistical
Association, 60, 395-409. JSTOR
Berger, J. (2003) Could
Fisher, Jeffreys and Neyman Have Agreed Upon Testing? Statistical Science,
18, 1-32 (2003). Euclid.
fff Bodmer, W.F. (1990)
Genetic Sequences, Proceedings of the
Royal Society B, 241, 85-92. JSTOR
fff Box, G. E. P. (1976) Science and Statistics, Journal of the American Statistical Association, 71, 791-799. JSTOR
Box, G. E. P. (1989) Quality Improvement: an Expanding Domain for the Application of Scientific Method. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, 327, 617–630. JSTOR
Breslow, N.E. (1996) Statistics
in Epidemiology: the Case-control Study. In
Advances in Biometry, ed. Armitage, P. and David, H. A., New York: Wiley,
287–318.
Brillinger, D. R. (1992) Nerve Cell Spike Train Data Analysis: A Progression of Technique, Journal of the American Statistical Association, 87, 260-271. JSTOR
Chernoff, H. (1980) The Identification of an Element of a Large Population in the Presence of Noise, 8, 1179-1197. JSTOR
Cochran, W. G. (1973) Experiments for Nonlinear Functions” Journal of the American Statistical Association, 68, 771-781. JSTOR
Cook, R. D. (2007) Dimension Reduction in Regression, (with discussion), Statistical Science, 22, 1-43. Euclid
Cox, D. R. (1984) Present
Position and Potential Developments: Some Personal Views. Design of Experiments
and Regression. Journal of the Royal
Statistical Society A 147,
306–315. JSTOR
Daniel, C. (1973) One-at-a-time
Plans, Journal of the American
Statistical Association, 68,
353-360. JSTOR
Dempster, A. P. (1998) Logicist Statistics. 1. Models and Modeling. Statistical Science, 13, 248–276.
fff Doll, R. (2002) Proof of Causality: Deduction from Epidemiological Observation, Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 45, Number 4, 499-515.
fff Edwards, A. W. F. (1995) Fiducial Inference and the Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection. XVIIIth Fisher Memorial Lecture, Biometrics, 51, 799-809. JSTOR
fff Edwards, A. W. F. (1993) Mendel, Galton, Fisher. Australian Journal of Statistics, 35, 129-140.
Efron, B. (1998) R. A. Fisher in the 21st Century, Statistical Science (with discussion), 13, 95-122. Euclid.
Fienberg, S. E. (1981) Recent Advances in Theory and Methods for the Analysis of Categorical Data: Making the Link to Statistical Practice. Bulletin of the International Statistical Institute 49(2), 763-791.
Finney, D.J. (1979) Bioassay and the Practice of Statistical Inference. International Statistical Review 47, 1–12.
Fraser, D. A. S ( 1991) Statistical Inference: Likelihood to Significance. Journal of the American Statistical
Association, 86, 258-265. JSTOR
Goodman, L.A. (1968) The Analysis of Cross-classified Data: Independence, Quasi-independence, and Interactions in Contingency Tables with or without Missing Entries. Journal of the American Statistical Association 63, 1091–1131. JSTOR
Healy, M.J.R. (1995) Frank Yates, 1902–1994 – The Work of a Statistician. International Statistical Review 63, 271–288.
Kalbfleisch, J. D. (2000) The Estimating Function Bootstrap, Canadian Journal of Statistics, 30, 449-499.
Karlin, S. and Matessi, C. (1983) Kin Selection and Altruism. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 219, 327–353. JSTOR
fff Kempthorne, O. (1966) Some Aspects of Experimental Inference, Journal
of the American Statistical Association, 61, 11-34. JSTOR
Mallows, C. (1998) The Zeroth problem. The American Statistician 52, 1-9.
fff Mayo, O. (2004) To What Extent has Fisher’s
Research Program been Fulfilled in Australia, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Statistics, 46(4), 517-529.
Mosteller, F.
(1989) Methods for Studying Coincidences (with P. Diaconis) Journal of the American Statistical Association, 84, 853-861. JSTOR
fff Rubin, D. B. (2005) Causal Inference Using Potential Outcomes: Design, Modeling, Decisions, Journal of the American Statistical Association, 100, 322-331.
fff Savage, L. J.
(1976) On Rereading R. A. Fisher, (with discussion) Annals of Statistics, 4,
441-500. JSTOR
fff Speed, T. (2006) Recombination and Linkage, Presentation pdf (16MB)
Thompson, E. A. (1996) Likelihood and Linkage: from Fisher to the Future. Annals of Statistics 24, 449–465. JSTOR
Thompson, E. A. (2007) 1953: An Unrecognised Summit in Human Genetic Linkage Analysis, Statistics Surveys, 1.
Yates, F. (1966) Computers, the Second Revolution in Statistics, Biometrics 22, 233–251. JSTOR
_____________________________________________________
Fisher
Chance, risk and health An Open University series of 4 podcasts on RA Fisher and his legacy
Fisher quotations compiled by A.W. F. Edwards
Fisher’s notes on the classification of the Rhesus blood groups
The syllabus for George Casella’s course (Statistical) Fisher in the 21st century
My other Fisher sites (referred to in this document)
Ronald
Fisher’s childhood home
Likelihood
and Probability in R. A. Fisher’s Statistical Methods for Research Workers
Student’s
review of Fisher’s Statistical Methods
E. S.
Pearson’s reviews of Fisher’s Statistical
Methods
Leon
Isserlis’s review of Fishers’ Statistical Methods
Nature
review of Fisher’s Statistical Methods
BMJ
review of Fisher’s Statistical Methods
General
Peter Lee’s History of Statistics has many interesting links.
For recent literature Recent Publications in the History of Probability and Statistics at the JEHPS.
Peter Cameron’s Encyclopaedia of Design Theory treats a subject Fisher revolutionised.
Paul Handford’s Brief History of Population Genetics has a section on Fisher.
The Current Index to Statistics is useful for Fisher topics. There is free access to its pre-1996 entries
MedHist the Wellcome Library’s gateway to internet resources for the history of medicine has sections on genetics and eugenics.
My Figures from the History of Probability and Statistics has a sketch of the history of probability and statistics and notes on some of the key people.