Random Trivia...

Did you know that......




Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher is the well known "Father of Statistics", it is because of his  contributions to experimental design, analysis of variance, and likelihood based methods. This great man lived on 1890 to 1962 and was an English statistician, evolutionary biologist, and geneticist.  He was described as "The greatest of Darwin's successors", and the historian of statistics Anders Hald said "Fisher was a genius who almost single-handedly created the foundations for modern statistical science"

                                                       Sir Ronald Alymer Fisher in his youth

His beginnings...

Fisher was born in East Finchley in London, England, with goodly parents namely George and Katie Fisher. His father was a successful fine arts dealer. He had a joyful childhood, having three older sisters, an older brother, and his mother,  who died when Fisher was 14.

Even though  Ronald Fisher had very poor eyesight he was a precocious student, winning the Neeld Medal which is a competitive essay writing in Mathematics at Harrow School at the age of 16. His poor eyesight was not an obstacle for him and he was tutored in mathematics without the aid of paper and pen, which developed his ability to visualize problems in geometrical terms, without contributing to his interest in writing proper derivations of mathematical solutions, especially proofs. He amazed his peers with his ability and skill to conjecture mathematical solutions without justifying his conclusions by showing intermediate steps. He also had a strong interest in biology, and specially, evolution.

In 1909 he won a scholarship to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. There he had many friends and were entangled with the heavy intellectual atmosphere. At Cambridge, he learned of the newly rediscovered theory of Mendelian genetics and eugenics, which he saw as a pressing social as well as scientific issue that encompassed both genetics and statistics.

In 1911 he was involved in forming the Cambridge University Eugenics Society with John Maynard Keynes, R.C. Punnett and Horace Darwin which is Charles Darwin's son. Near Fisher's graduation in 1912, Fisher's tutor informed his student him that despite his enormous aptitude and dedication for scientific work and his mathematical potential, his disinclination to show calculations or to prove propositions unfortunately made him unsuited for a career in applied mathematics, which required greater fortitude. His tutor gave him a "luke-warm" recommendation, saying that if Fisher "had stuck to the ropes he would have made a first class mathematician, but he would not."

His book The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection started in 1928 and was published in 1930. It contained a summary of what was already known to the literature. He also explained and proved that larger populations carry more variation so that they have a larger chance of survival. He set forth the foundations of what was to become known as population genetics.

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BY: CARL JOEL E.  PALMA III- GOLD