The Triumph of Numbers
How Counting Shaped Modern Life
New York : W.W. Norton, [2005]
Format: Book
Description: 209 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm
The great historian of science I. B. Cohen explores how numbers have come to assume a leading role in science, in the operations and structure of government, in marketing, and in many other aspects of daily life. Consulting and collecting numbers has been a feature of human affairs since antiquity--taxes, head counts for military service--but not until the Scientific Revolution in the twelfth century did social numbers such as births, deaths, and marriages begin to be analyzed. Cohen shines a new light on familiar figures such as Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and Charles Dickens; and he reveals Florence Nightingale to be a passionate statistician. Cohen has left us with an engaging and accessible history of numbers, an appreciation of the essential nature of statistics.
Subjects:
Mathematical statistics -- History.
Statistics -- History.
Science -- History.
Science -- Mathematical models -- History.
Mathematical statistics -- History.
Statistics -- History.
Science -- History.
Science -- Mathematical models -- History.
ISBN:
0393057690
Availability | |||
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Call Number | Location | Shelf Location | Status |
MATH Statistics Coh | Sandhills Indoors | Nonfiction | In |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 189-199) and index.