Ronald Fisher
Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher (17 February 1890 – 29 July 1962) was a British statistician and geneticist, who is considered “the single most important figure in 20th century statistics.”
He is responsible for, popularized, or is credited with the following statistical techniques:
- Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) – technique developed from decades of crop experiment to quantify the statistical significance of factors on the overall variation in the data.
- P-value – Fisher popularized the concept, and proposed the level p=0.05, or a 1 in 20 chance of being exceeded by chance, as a limit for statistical significance.
- Design of experiments (DOE) – principles of the design of experiments
- F-distribution – Originally called Fisher’s z-distribution, it was a new statistical method which was later called the Fisher–Snedecor (F) distribution.
- Fisher’s exact test – statistical significance test used in the analysis of a 2×2 contingency tables
- Student’s t-distribution – popularized the distribution for small samples, and called it “Student’s distribution” and represented the test value with the letter t.
- Fisher’s permutation test
- Fisher’s equation – Also known as Kolmogorov-Petrovsky–Piskunov equation for partial differentials
The R. A. Fisher Lectureship is a very high recognition annual lecture prize established in 1963 in North America. It is given in recognition of achievement and scholarship in statistical science for those who have a highly significant impact of statistical methods on scientific investigations. It provides the lecturer with a plaque and a cash award of $1000 USD.
In 1998, a minor planet, 21451 Fisher, was named after him.
Influences
- Charles Darwin
Influenced
- W. Edwards Deming
- Richard Dawkins
- Dorian Shainin
- George Box
- Genichi Taguchi
Links
Books
Additional Resources
- A Brief History of Kaizen: The Key Players– creativesafetysupply.com
- Non-Normal Distributions in the Real World– blog.creativesafetysupply.com
- The History of Six Sigma– lean-news.com
- Implementing Six Sigma– hiplogic.com
- Does Employee Recognition Improve Productivity?– 5snews.com
- How to Select a Good Six Sigma Project– iecieeechallenge.org
- 3P and Lean– kaizen-news.com