Abstract
Statistics state the status of the state. All four s words derive from the Greek στάσισ and Latin status, or standing. Standing (for humans) is a state of being, a condition that represents literally or figuratively the active status of an individual, group, or state. Modern statistics as a discipline arose in the early 18th century, when collection of data about the state was recognized as essential to serving the needs of its constituents. This Enlightenment perspective gave rise not only to the modern social sciences, but also to mathematical methods for analyzing data measured with error (Stigler, 1983).
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© 1999 Springer Science+Business Media New York
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Wilkinson, L. (1999). Statistics. In: The Grammar of Graphics. Statistics and Computing. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-3100-2_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-3100-2_8
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4757-3102-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-4757-3100-2
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