Ronald Fisher
Ronald Fisher
Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher FRS, who published as R. A. Fisher, was an English statistician, and biologist, who used mathematics to combine Mendelian genetics and natural selection, helping to create a new Darwinist synthesis of evolution known as modern evolutionary synthesis, as well as a prominent eugenicist in the early part of his life...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionMathematician
Date of Birth17 February 1890
pythagorean-theorem analysis method
The analysis of variance is not a mathematical theorem, but rather a convenient method of arranging the arithmetic.
died english-mathematician perform
To call in the statistician after the experiment is done may be no more than asking him to perform a post-mortem examination: he may be able to say what the experiment died of.
research natural dogmatism
In scientific subjects, the natural remedy for dogmatism has been found in research.
nature views trials
No aphorism is more frequently repeated in connection with field trials, than that we must ask Nature few questions, or, ideally, one question, at a time. The writer is convinced that this view is wholly mistaken. Nature, he suggests, will best respond to a logical and carefully thought out questionnaire; indeed, if we ask her a single question, she will often refuse to answer until some other topic has been discussed.
done plans experiments
The best time to plan an experiment is after you've done it.
knowledge world inference
Inductive inference is the only process known to us by which essentially new knowledge comes into the world.
variation experiments related
We have usually no knowledge that any one factor will exert its effects independently of all others that can be varied, or that its effects are particularly simply related to variations in these other factors.
may chance natural
No isolated experiment, however significant in itself, can suffice for the experimental demonstration of any natural phenomenon; for the "one chance in a million" will undoubtedly occur, with no less and no more than its appropriate frequency, however surprised we may be that it should occur to us.
phrases may tests
(Coining the phrase 'test of significance'): Critical tests of this kind may be called tests of significance, and when such tests are available we may discover whether a second sample is or is not significantly different from the first.
responsibility understanding process
The statistician cannot evade the responsibility for understanding the process he applies or recommends.
data issues body
Modern statisticians are familiar with the notion that any finite body of data contains only a limited amount of information on any point under examination; that this limit is set by the nature of the data themselves, and cannot be increased by any amount of ingenuity expended in their statistical examination: that the statistician's task, in fact, is limited to the extraction of the whole of the available information on any particular issue.
statistics procedures interpretation
... the actual and physical conduct of an experiment must govern the statistical procedure of its interpretation.
zero balance finals
The neutral zone of selective advantage in the neighbourhood of zero is thus so narrow that changes in the environment, and in the genetic constitution of species, must cause this zone to be crossed and perhaps recrossed relatively rapidly in the course of evolutionary change, so that many possible gene substitutions may have a fluctuating history of advance and regression before the final balance of selective advantage is determined.
book important genetics
This is perhaps the most important book on evolutionary genetics ever written