![]() The First Statistical Labs: Before the Tabulator Yet these researchers hoped that the combination of computing technology and mathematical statistics would radically change science. They published little and made only marginal contributions to the theory of statistics or the development of computers. Brandt, Howard Tolley-are not recognizable by many. Some of the names associated with these early labs-James Glover, H. This organization-supportive of empirical research-helped to establish the largest and most sophisticated of the statistical laboratories, the Statistics Lab at Iowa State University. The only source of government money for scientific research was the Department of Agriculture. ![]() The scientific infrastructure was developed by Vanevar Bush during and after World War II. In the 1920s, there were no instrumentation grants for the mathematical sciences. The larger labs were funded by donations. ![]() A few of these labs, most notably those at Iowa State University and Columbia University, became test beds for early computer scientists, who experimented with new ideas for computing machines and for numerical algorithms. Some created tables of higher mathematical functions others solved complicated differential equations. Many of these labs offered their services to physicists, astronomers, biologists, and social scientists. Without them, modern statistical methodology could have languished as an interesting theory, useful for small problems. They encouraged researchers to think in terms of large problems with extensive datasets. ![]() They helped make Galton's and Pearson's ideas on correlation practical tools that could be used for scientific research. These labs proved to be important places for advancing statistical methodology. They used these machines for tabulating and computing summary statistics and for fitting more complicated statistical models, such as analyses of variance and linear regressions. Statistical computing became a popular field for study during the 1920s and 1930s, as universities and research labs began to acquire the early IBM mechanical punched card tabulators. This article originally ran in the September 2006 issue of Amstat News. Now that the era of Big Data has arrived and statisticians are searching for ways to handle massive data sets, it is interesting to look back on the early days of statistical computing and just how far it has come. The Iowa State University Statistics Lab in 1930 Home » The Origins of Statistical Computingĭuring the 1920s and 1930s, computing labs helped establish statistics as a discipline in the United States ![]()
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