Abstract
R.A. Fisher had an abiding interest in inference, which came out in many of his writings. The inaugural meeting of the British Region of the Biometric Society was notable for his far-reaching presidential address (Fisher, 1948) in which he saw statistical science as doing for inference what mathematics had done for deduction. Among his contributions to the subject, the most influential has surely been the concept of significance, widely used from the time of its appearance. Although immensely valuable as an intellectual tool, its widespread and uncritical use has arguably been harmful as well as beneficial.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Bailey. N.J.T. (1959). Statistical Methods in Biology. English Universities Press, London.
Barnard, G.A. (1990). Must clinical trials be large? The interpretation of P-values and the combination of test results. Statistics in Med.. 9, 601 –614.
Bryan-Jones, J., and Finney, D.J. (1983). An error in “Instructions to authors,” HortSci.. 18. 279–282.
Dyke. G.V. (1974). Comparative Experiments with Field Crops. Butterworth, London.
Finney, DJ. (1955). Experimental Design and Its Statistical Basis. Cambridge University Press. London.
Fisher. R.A. (1948). Biometry, Biometrics, 4, 217–219.
Fisher. R.A., and Mackenzie, W. A. (1923). Studies in crop variation. II. The manorial response of different potato varieties. J. Agric. Sci. ( Cambridge ). 13. 311–320.
Gosset, W.S. (1936). Cooperation in large-scale experiments (with discussion). J. Roy. Statist. Soc., Suppl., 3. 114–136.
Hoblyn, T.N. (1931). Field Experiments in Horticulture. Tech. Comm. 2.. Commonwealth of Bur. Fruit Production. East Mailing, Kent, England.
Little, T.M. (1978) If Galileo published in HortScience. HortSci. 13, 504–506.
Mercer, W.B., and Hall, A.D. (1911). The experimental error of field trials, J. Agric. Sci. (Cambridge), 4. 107–132.
Neyman. J. (1935). Statistical problems in agricultural experimentation, (with discussion). J. Roy. Statist. Soc.. Suppl., 2, 107–180
Pearce, S.C. (1989) The size of a comparative experiment, J. Appl. Statist., 16, 3–6.
Preece. D.A. (1984). Biometry in the Third World: Science, not ritual. Biometrics, 40. 519–523.
Wishart, J., and Sanders, H.G. (1936). Principles and Practice of Field Experiments. Empire Cotton Growing Corp.. London.
Yates. F. (1933). Tin: principles of orthogonality and confounding in replicated experiments, J. Agric. Sci. (Cambridge), 23, 108–145.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1992 Springer-Verlag New York, Inc.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Pearce, S.C. (1992). Introduction to Fisher (1925) Statistical Methods for Research Workers. In: Kotz, S., Johnson, N.L. (eds) Breakthroughs in Statistics. Springer Series in Statistics. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-4380-9_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-4380-9_5
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-0-387-94039-7
Online ISBN: 978-1-4612-4380-9
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive