The Cambridge Dictionary of Statistics (3rd edition)

Statistics underlie much of what we do and what goes on in the world. Which numbers come up in the lottery, how many people are killed in road accidents, the link between diet and disease, and how long we live. Chance has always played a part in human life and traditionally the effects have been ascribed to the gods or to that strange commodity “luck”. The science of statistics can be reasonably said to start with Thomas Bayes's paper of 1763. Since then the subject has grown, and is growing fast as witnessed by the fact that this book has...