R.A. Fisher

Publications

100

In 1935 RA Fisher wrote this book, which provided a few examples of good experimental design. This book included a description of the experiment of the lady tasting tea and the various ways in which an experiment may be designed to test if she could actually tell the difference.

What is "The Design of Experiments"

200

Pearson, Galton, and Weldon developed this journal in 1901 with the intent of publishing work that applied statistics to the field of biology, particularly eugenics. RA Fisher had two papers published in this journal after which Pearson never allowed another paper of Fisher’s to be published in the journal.

What is "Biometrika"?

300

In 1925 RA Fisher published the first edition of this book, which described how to analyze data, including examples with formulas and interpretation. This book was useful in that even those with minimal mathematical training could use it and apply the concepts.

What is "Statistical Methods for Research Workers"?

400

In 1958 Fisher published this pamphlet, which included multiple papers on his beliefs regarding a major public health issue and his insistence that correlation does not equal causation.

What is "Smoking: the Cancer Controversy. Some Attempts to Analyze the Evidence"?

Contributions

100

In response to Karl Pearson’s methods of computing parameters of distributions, RA Fisher proposed this. Fisher’s method quickly became the major method for estimating parameters of a statistical model using data.

What is "Maximum Likelihood Estimation"?

200

While working at Rothamsted Research, RA Fisher introduced the term variance and developed this method of analyzing large amounts of data from crop experiments. This is used to analyze differences among and between groups.

What is "Analysis of Variance (ANOVA)"?

300

RA Fisher developed most of the significance testing methods now in general use. He referred to the probability that allows one to declare significance as this.

What is "P-value"?

400

Developed by RA Fisher, this is a type of statistical inference that has fallen out of modern statistical practice. Fisher claimed that Neyman had stolen his idea for this when Neyman introduced confidence intervals (despite the two concepts being different).

What is "Fiducial Inference"?

Controversies

100

R.A. Fisher’s belief that “Caucasians had a superior capacity for intelligence” meant he, like many other academics at the time, believed in this.

What is "Eugenics"?

200

While R.A. Fisher was considered a genius by many, he incorrectly claimed there was only correlation and not causation between these two variables.

What is "Smoking and Lung Cancer"?

300

Fisher had a longstanding disagreement with this person over correlation coefficient findings and methods of computing parameters of distributions. Hint: This person (along with others) founded Biometrika.

Who is "Karl Pearson"?

400

R.A. Fisher critiqued this person's work on genetics, claiming that conformity between proposed and actual ratios in the results were exaggerated.

Who is "George Mendel"?